After this, the alderman, or one of his assessors,
made a discourse on the laws of the land, and the duties of good
subjects and good citizens. When these preliminaries were over,
they proceede to try and determine, first the causes of the
church, next the pleas of the crown, and last of all the
controversies of private parties." 8 Henry's History of Great
Britain, 348.
This view is corroborated by Tyrrell's Introduction to the
History of England; p. 83-84, and by Spence's Origin of the Laws
and Political Institutions of Modern Europe, p. 447, and the note
on the same page. Also by a law of Canute to this effect, In
every county let there be twice a year an assembly, whereat the
bishop and the earl shall be present, the one to instruct the
people in divine, the other in human, laws. Wilkins, p. 136.
"But the prince or earl performed not, at all times, in person,
the obligations of his office. The enjoyment of ease and of
pleasure, to which in Germany he had delivered himself over,
when disengaged from war, and the mean idea he conceived
of the drudgery of civil affairs, made him often delegate to an
inferior person the distribution of justice in his district.
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