Law Courts 155
institution by which men of a locality answered upon oath
questions put to them by some one acting under the royal
command, and about a matter, usually relating to land
and revenue, in which the king was interested. The
contrast is obvious. It cannot, perhaps, be dogmatically
denied that the early Prankish kings had adapted to their
own use and developed the Prankish institution that corre-
sponded to the Anglo-Saxon sworn witnesses, but there
is no evidence of it. There is no possibility of the in-
quest's having come from either of the other two in-
stitutions.
There existed, however, in the later Roman empire a
custom the same in all essentials as the one whose origin
we are discussing* It went by the same name, inguisitio,
was used by the central government, and for the same
general purpose. For the interval between the fall of
the empire and the eighth century no evidence has been
found, so that it cannot be asserted positively that this
was its origin; but in view of the amount of borrowing of
this sort that is known to have taken place, it is more
probable that the Prankish kings took the institution
from Rome in just the form in which they so long used it
than that they made over a practice of the native, local
courts into an instrument of central power.
The regret which some writers have evidently felt at
having to abandon an Anglo-Saxon, and even a Teutonic,
origin for the jury seems uncalled for when the matter is
properly considered. The sworn inquest wvas an existing
institution which English kings, courts, and people
chanced to seize upon, and which, in the course of cen-
turies and through many unforeseen influences, they made
over into something that was in many respects radically
different. The primitive inquest was a piece of admin-
istrative machinery which had nothing to do with a court
system, central or local; throughout its known history,
it had been an instrument of royal power, and probably
often, as in the hands of William the Conqueror, of royal
oppression. The matured judicial jury has done its