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captain. Hence it is, that we may find traces of juries in the laws of all those nations which adopted the feudal system, as in Germany, France, and Italy, who had all of them a tribunal composed of twelve good men, and true, "boni homines," usually the vassals or tenants of the Lord, being the equals or peers of the parties litigant; and as the Lord's vassals judged each other in the Lord's courts; so the King's vassals, or the Lords themselves, judged each other in the King's court. In England we find mention of them so early as the laws of King Ethelred, and that not as a new invention. This tribunal was universally established of old among all the northern nations; and so interwoven in their very constitution, that the earliest accounts of the one, give us also some traces of the other. Its establishment, however, and use in this island, of what date soever it be, though for a time greatly impaired and shaken by the introduction of the Norman trial by battel, was always so highly esteemed and valued by the people, that no conquest, no change of government could ever prevail to abolish it. In Magna
