ed taxation through the
presence of these classes in the Great Council itself.

The effort however to revive the old personal attendance of the lesser
baronage which had broken down half a century before could hardly be
renewed at a time when the increase of their numbers made it more
impracticable than ever; but a means of escape from this difficulty was
fortunately suggested by the very nature of the court through which alone a
summons could be addressed to the landed knighthood. Amidst the many
judicial reforms of Henry or Edward the Shire Court remained unchanged. The
haunted mound or the immemorial oak round which the assembly gathered (for
the court was often held in the open air) were the relics of a time before
the free kingdom had sunk into a shire and its Meetings of the Wise into a
County Court. But save that the king's reeve had taken the place of the
king and that the Norman legislation had displaced the Bishop and set four
Coroners by the Sheriff's side, the gathering of the freeholders remained
much as of old. The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husbandmen of the
county, were all represented in the crowd that gathered round the Sheriff,
as guarded by his liveried followers he published the king's writs,
announced his demand of aids, received the presentment of criminals and the
inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation of each district, or
listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who
held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke.
It was in the County Court alone that the Sheriff could legally summon the
lesser baronage to attend the Great Council, and it was in the actual
constitution of this assembly that the Crown found a solution of the
difficulty which we have stated. For the principle of representation by
which it was finally solved was coeval with the Shire Court itself. In all
cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn assessors of the
Sheriff, as members of a class, though not formally deputed for that
purpose, practically represented the judicial opinion of the county at
large. From every hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the
"jurors" through whom the presentments of the district were made to the
royal officer and with whom the assessment of its share in the general
taxation was arranged. The husbandmen on the outskirts of the crowd, clad
in the brown smock frock which still lingers in the garb of our carter