.

It is scarcely possible, indeed, to estimate the difficulties in the way
of justice when Henry came to the throne. The wretched freeholders
summoned to the Shire Court from farm and cattle, from mill or anvil
or carpenter's bench, knew well the terrors of the journey through marsh
and fen and forest, the dangers of flood and torrent, and perhaps of
outlawed thief or murderer, the privations and hardships of the way; and
the heavy fines which occur in the king's rolls for non-attendance show
how anxiously great numbers of the suitors avoided joining in the
troublesome and thankless business of the court. When they reached the
place of trial a strange medley of business awaited them as questions
arose of criminal jurisdiction, of feudal tenure, of English "sac and
soc," of Norman franchises and Saxon liberties, with procedure sometimes
of the one people, sometimes of the other. The days dragged painfully on
as, without any help from trained lawyers, the "suitors" sought to settle
perplexed questions between opposing claims of national, provincial,
ecclesiastical, and civic laws, or made arduous journeys to visit the
scene of some murder or outrage, or sought for evidence on some difficult
problem of fact. Evidence, indeed, was not easy to find when the question
in dispute dated perhaps from some time before the civil war and the
suppression of the sheriff's courts, for no written record was ever kept
of the proceedings in court, and everything depended on the memory of
witnesses. The difficulties of taking evidence by compurgation increased
daily. A method which centuries before had been successfully applied to
the local crimes of small and stationary communities bound together by the
closest ties of kinship and of fellowship in possession of the soil, when
every transaction was inevitably known to the whole village or township,
became useless when new social and industrial conditions had destroyed the
older and simpler modes of life. The procedure of the courts was
antiquated and no longer guided by consistent principles. Their modes of
trial were so cumbrous, formal, and inflexible that it was scarcely
possible to avoid some minute technical mistake which might invalidate
the final decision.

The business of the larger courts, too, was for the most part carried on
in French under sheriff, or bailiff, or lord of the manor. The Norman
nobles did not know Latin, they were but gradually learning English; the
bulk of the