Source Problems in English History
Origin of the Jury urban and rural. In the boroughs they constituted the bulk of the population, and held their real estate by burgage tenure. Outside the boroughs, they were on the manors throughout England (sometimes themselves lords of manors), not nearly so numerous as the villeins, but always an important element in the population. Their tenure of land was by free socage, the ancestor of the modem fee simple. This middle class, both rural and urban, had important public duties and obligations. The obligation of the citizen to the state had been largely theirs. This obligation had two manifestations which ran back to time immemorial. There was the duty of attending the courts, — hundred and shire courts or borough courts. For these courts were assemblies of the people in which there were presiding officers, but no judges apart from the assembly itself; and upon the assembly rested the conduct of the trial and the finding of the judgments. The other obligation was to defend the state in the citizen army or militia. And when, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Danegeld became a true tax, and when at the end of the twelfth and in the thirteenth centtiry the Danegeld was replaced by the more developed carucage and taxes on movables, the class of non-noble freemen bore an important share of the burden. It was a class, then, that stood face to face with the state and did not, like the villeins, bear its burden in some indirect and servile way through landlords, nor did it escape some burdens and become charged with others in a special and personal way like the nobles.
But the most striking fact about English classes in the middle ages and the one most frequently remarked upon is the split which took place in the nobility. The lower nobles, the knights, parted company in most respects with the greater barons and approached the class below.
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