English law in the time of Magna Carta was based on two traditions, one going back to the time before the Norman Conquest of 1066, the other created in the 12th century. The older tradition had roots in old customs and in texts, one of which is thought to have been written between 601 and 604 AD.
A wide range of issues was covered by these early laws, including punishment for criminal activity and compensation payments for injuries. One of the kings who contributed to this legal system was Alfred, king of the West Saxons (c849–899), who laid the foundations for a united kingdom of England. The counties into which England was divided, probably since the ninth century, were administrative units under royal officials – ‘shire reeves’ – who were also entrusted with the task of jurisdiction. They convened the county courts, and it was here and in the subdivisions of the counties (of which there were hundreds) that most trials took place.
The law dispensed here was ‘customary’ law. It had been developed further through written royal laws, which are often attributed to individual rulers of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Most people had to take their litigation to the county court and only members of the social elite had direct access to the king.
The second tradition, created by the legal changes in the 12th century, generated a new legal system based on royal justice. It was enforced by royal judges who were sent into the counties, where they used the traditional county courts as a forum for a gradually developing new royal law.
The jury system
Among the legal innovations was the jury, which was introduced in civil cases – mostly those about the possession of land as well as in the criminal law. Juries were supposed to be composed of well-informed people who would provide information with the promise – made before God – to speak the truth. This obligation gave them their name: jury, from Latin ‘jurare’, meaning to give an oath.
In the evolving land law, juries were used to determine questions of fact, answerable simply by ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in proceedings about inheritance or in disputes about ‘seisin’, a form of direct control of land and buildings. Was the claimant’s ancestor really the last person to be seised and is the claimant really that tenant’s heir? Had a person who had been seised of a specific piece of land been forcibly evicted without judgement?
These – and similar – procedures were popular, and part of the beginnings of a common law that was based on royal authority and which applied to all parts of the kingdom in the same way. The mechanisms of this law were first described by Ranulf de Glanvill, one of the administrators of Henry II (king of England from 1154–89), who also served as a military leader and diplomat, his career culminating when he obtained the highest office in royal service, that of justiciar.
Glanvill’s treatise, On the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England, reveals a pragmatic and in many ways modern legal system. During Henry II’s reign royal justice was made available to all free subjects, and since the king and his court tended to be mobile (not merely in England but also in other territories, notably Normandy), a royal law court independent of the royal household was set
