c. 3, it was enacted that "no indictor be put on an inquest upon the

deliverance of one indicted for trespass or felony, if he be challenged for this cause by the party indicted." Persons "presented" or accused could "put themselves" upon different counties, that is to say, could submit their case to juries drawn from such counties, with certain limitations, as they might elect. Thus we find a case where one having been "presented" by an accusing jury "puts himself on the County of Surrey and on all men in England who know him." At Easter came riding twenty-four knights from Surrey at the king's summons who promptly found him to be a robber, and, says the record, "Since he put himself upon these, _let him be hanged_."

There is a criminal case in Y.B. 30 & 31 Edw. I, 528, which throws a good light on the procedure of the time. W. was the stabler of J.'s horse and had been kicked, while trying to mount, so that he died. The horse thereupon became forfeit to the king as a _deodand_. The jury accused J. of keeping the horse in spite of this and also charged him with having buried W. without calling in the coroner. This he denied and "put himself on the county." The judge, addressing the jury, which was probably the same that had made the accusation, charged as follows:

"If W. died from the kick of the horse, the horse would be _deodand_. If not it would be John's. If the king should lose through you what rightly belongs to him, you would be perjured. If you should take away from John what is his, you would commit a mortal sin. Therefore, by the oath you have made, disclose and tell us the truth, whether the said W. died of the horse's kick or not. If you find that he did, tell us in whose hands is the _deodand_ horse and what he is worth; and whether the said W. was buried without a view of the coroner."

All things considered--a pretty good charge.

Gradually, and in large measure because the "ordeal" had disappeared and the grand jury as a distinct body had been fully established, no method of ascertaining the truth of an accusation was left, and a mere presentment in fact amounted to a conviction, so that the need of some other jury to pass upon the issue was apparent. Out of this need the modern petty jury developed.

In course of time the accusing jury became as it is now, a distinct and separate body, deliberating secretly, its members being no longer permitted to sit as trial jurors. They acted on common report, their own personal information, and upon the application of injured parties, and initiated most criminal proceedings. It was necessary for some one to ferret out crime and hold the perpetrators for trial, and the jury did practically the whole business. As the years went on the jury became more and more a purely _ex parte_ accusing body with practically no judicial supervision and receiving about what it saw fit as evidence. From time to time the powers and the character of the grand jury has been fiercely assailed. Two centuries ago it came near receiving a knock-out blow, but it had become too firmly established. In Shaftsbury's case, 8 How. St. Tr. 759 (1681), they were in fact compelled to receive their evidence publicly in court, but their vigorous protests and the failure of the attempt left the body all the more securely entrenched in English procedure.--_Condensation from Prof. J.B. Thayer's masterly chapter on "Trial by Jury and Its Development" in his "Preliminary Treatise on the Law of Evidence."_]

[Footnote 26: Cf. "Reform in Criminal Procedure," H.W. Chapin, 7 Harvard Law Review 189.]