mers_,
mentions this oath (page 73) as being still administered to judges, that
is, in the time of Charles II., more than three hundred years after the
oath was first ordained. If the oath has never been changed, it follows
that judges have not only never been sworn to support any statutes
whatever of the king, or of parliament, but that, for five hundred
years past, they actually have been sworn to treat as invalid all
statutes that were contrary to the common law.

SECTION VI.

_The Coronation Oath._

That the legislation of the king was of no authority over a jury, is
further proved by the oath taken by the kings at their coronation. This
oath seems to have been substantially the same, from the time of the
_Saxon_ kings, down to the seventeenth century, as will be seen from the
authorities hereafter given.

The purport of the oath is, that the king swears _to maintain the law of
the land_--that is, _the common law_. In other words, he swears "_to
concede and preserve to the English people the laws and customs conceded
to them by the ancient, just, and pious English kings, * * and
especially the laws, customs, and liberties conceded to the clergy and
people by the illustrious king Edward;" * * and "the just laws and
customs which the common people have chosen, (quas vulgus elegit)_."

These are the same laws and customs which were called by the general
name of "_the law of the land_," or "_the common law_," and, with some
slight additions, were embodied in _Magna Carta_.

This oath not only forbids the king to enact any statutes contrary to
the common law, but it proves that his statutes could be of no authority
over the consciences of a jury; since, as has already been sufficiently
shown, it was one part of this very common law itself,--that is, of the
ancient "laws, customs, and liberties," mentioned in the oath,--that
juries should judge of all questions that came before them, according to
their own consciences, independently of the legislation of the king.

It was impossible that this right of the jury could subsist consistently
with any right, on the part of the king, to impose any authoritative
legislation upon them. His oath, therefore, to maintain the law of the
land, or the ancient "laws, customs, and liberties," was equivalent to
an oath that he would never _assume_ to impose laws upon juries, as
imperative rules of decision, or take from them the right to try all
cases according to their own consc