ral centuries after the
Conquest, the jurors, _both in civil and criminal cases_, were sworn
merely to _speak the truth_. (Glanville, lib. 2, cap. 17; Bracton, lib.
3, cap. 22; lib. 4, p. 287, 291; Britton, p. 135.) Hence their decision
was accurately termed _veredictum_, or verdict, that is, 'a thing truly
said'; whereas the phrase 'true verdict' in the modern oath is not an
accurate expression."--_Political Dictionary_, word _Jury_.]

[Footnote 57: Of course, there can be no legal trial by jury, in either
civil or criminal cases, where the jury are sworn to try the cases
"_according to law_."]

[Footnote 58: _Coke_, as late as 1588, admits that amercements must be
fixed by the peers (8 Coke's Rep. 38, 2 Inst. 27); but he attempts,
wholly without success, as it seems to me, to show a difference between
fines and amercements. The statutes are very numerous, running through
the three or four hundred years immediately succeeding Magna Carta, in
which fines, ransoms, and amercements are spoken of as if they were the
common punishments of offences, and as if they all meant the same thing.
If, however, any technical difference could be made out between them,
there is clearly none in principle; and the word amercement, as used in
Magna Carta, must be taken in its most comprehensive sense.]

[Footnote 59: "_Common right_" was the common law. _1 Coke's Inst._ 142
a. 2 _do._ 55, 6.]

[Footnote 60: The oath of the justices is in these words:

"Ye shall swear, that well and lawfully ye shall serve our lord the king
_and his people_, in the office of justice, and that lawfully ye shall
counsel the king in his business, and that ye shall not counsel nor
assent to anything which may turn him in damage or disherison in any
manner, way, or color. And that ye shall not know the damage or
disherison of him, whereof ye shall not cause him to be warned by
yourself, or by other; _and that ye shall do equal law and execution of
right to all his subjects, rich and poor, without having regard to any
person_. And that ye take not by yourself, or by other, privily nor
apertly, gift nor reward of gold nor silver, nor of any other thing that
may turn to your profit, unless it be meat or drink, and that of small
value, of any man that shall have any plea or process hanging before
you, as long as the same process shall be so hanging, nor after for the
same cause. And that ye take no fee, as long as ye shall be justice, nor
robe of any man great