lesser clergy perhaps spoke Latin, but did not know Norman;
the poorer people spoke only English; the clerks who from this time began
to note down the proceedings of the king's judges in Latin must often
have been puzzled by dialects of English strange to him. When each side
in a trial claimed its own customary law, and neither side understood the
speech of the other, the president of the court had every temptation to
be despotic and corrupt, and the interpreter between him and his suitors
became an important person who had much influence in deciding what mode
of procedure was to be followed. The sheriff, often holding a hereditary
post and fearing therefore no check to his despotism, added to the burden
of the unhappy freeholders by a custom of summoning at his own fancy
special courts, and laying heavy fines on those who did not attend them.
Even when the law was fairly administered there was a growing number of
cases in which the rigid forms of the court actually inflicted injustice,
as questions constantly arose which lay far outside the limits of the old
customary law of the Germanic tribes, or of the scanty knowledge of Roman
law which had penetrated into other codes. The men of that day looked too
often with utter hopelessness to the administration of justice; there was
no peril so great in all the dangers that surrounded their lives as the
peril of the law; there was no oppression so cruel as the oppression
wrought by the harsh and rigid forms of the courts. From such calamities
the miserable and despairing victims could look for no help save from the
miraculous aid of the saints; and society at that time, as indeed it has
been known to do in later days, was for ever appealing from the iniquity
of law to God,--to a God who protected murderers if they murdered Jews,
and defended robbers if they plundered usurers, who was, indeed, above
all law, and was supposed to distribute a violent and arbitrary justice,
answering to the vulgar notion of an equity unknown on earth.

We catch a glimpse of a trial of the time in the story of a certain
Ailward, whose neighbour had refused to pay a debt which he owed him.
Ailward took the law into his own hands, and broke into the house of his
debtor, who had gone to the tavern and had left his door fastened with
the lock hanging down outside, and his children playing within. Ailward
carried off as security for his debt the lock, a gimlet, and some tools,
and a whetstone which hung