10.

Tractatus De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliœ.

Bk. i. 5. When any one makes complaint to the lord king concerning his fief or his free tenement, if it be a complaint such as ought to be brought to his court or one which the king wishes to have brought there, then the demandant shall have the following writ of summons:

6. The king to the sheriff greeting. Command A that without delay he restore to B one hide of land in such a vill concerning which said B complains that said A is deforcing him: and unless he shall do this summon him by good summoners, that he be before me or my justices on the morrow after the octave of Easter to show why he has not done it. And have there the summoners and this writ.

. . . . . .

Bk. ii. 7. This Assize¹ is a kind of royal benefit, granted to the people through the kindness of the prince on the advice of the great men, by means of which men’ lives and the integrity of their status are so helpfully taken into consideration that in maintaining the right which they possess in free tenement of land, men are able to avoid the doubtful outcome of trial by battle. And thus it happens that One can escape the extreme sacrifice of an unexpected and premature death, or, if not that, the stain of eternal disgrace resulting from that hateful and untrue word which sounds so shamefully in the mouth of the conquered. This legal enactment is truly the product of the highest equity; for the ends of justice which, after many and long delays, it is hardly possible to attain by wager of battle, are reached both more conveniently and more quickly by these means.

. . . . . .

[The method of choosing the jury in the Grand Assize].

10. By such writs the tenant asks for peace and places himself upon the Assize, until his adversary, coming to the court, seeks another writ, which requires quires that, by four legal knights of the county and neighborhood, there be elected twelve legal knights of the same neighborhood, who shall state upon oath which of the litigants has the greater right in the land in question.

¹ Refers to the Grand Assize, of which the writer has just been speaking.