which he summoned year by year, that he perfected in a system of gradual reforms the administrative measures which Henry the First had begun.  The fabric of our judicial legislation commences in 1166 with the Assize of Clarendon, the first object of which was to provide for the order of the realm by reviving the old English system of mutual security or frankpledge.  No stranger might abide in any place save a borough and only there for a single night unless sureties were given for his good behaviour; and the list of such strangers was to be submitted to the itinerant justices.  In the provisions of this assize for the repression of crime we find the origin of trial by jury, so often attributed to earlier times.  Twelve lawful men of each hundred, with four from each township, were sworn to present those who were known or reputed as criminals within their district for trial by ordeal.  The jurors were thus not merely witnesses, but sworn to act as judges also in determining the value of the charge, and it is this double character of Henry’s jurors that has descended to our “grand jury,” who still remain charged with the duty of presenting criminals for trial after examination of the witnesses against them.  Two later steps brought the jury to its modern condition.  Under Edward the First witnesses acquainted with the particular fact in question were added in each case to the general jury, and by the separation of these two classes of jurors at a later time the last became simply “witnesses” without any judicial power, while the first ceased to be witnesses at all and became our modern jurors, who are only judges of the testimony given.  With this assize too a practice which had prevailed from the earliest English times, the practice of “compurgation,” passed away.  Under this system the accused could be acquitted of the charge by the voluntary oath of his neighbours and kinsmen; but this was abolished by the Assize of Clarendon, and for the fifty years which followed it his trial, after the investigation of the grand jury, was found solely in the ordeal or “judgement of God,” where innocence was proved by the power of holding hot iron in the hand or by sinking when flung into the water, for swimming was a proof of guilt.  It was the abolition of the whole system of ordeal by the Council of Lateran in 1216 which led the way to the establishment of what is called a “petty jury” for the final trial of prisoners.

[Sidenote:  Murder of Thomas]

But Henry’s work of reorganization had hardly begun when it was broken by the pressure of the strife with the Primate.  For six years the contest raged bitterly; at Rome, at Paris, the agents of the two powers intrigued against each other.  Henry stooped to acts of the meanest persecution in driving the Primate’s kinsmen from England, and in confiscating the lands of their order till the monks of Pontigny should refuse Thomas a home; while Beket himself exhausted the patience of his friends by his violence and excommunications,