160 The Period of Constitution Making
For a long time, there was no conscious creating of a new
form of jury, but a tentative use of one or more of the old
forms. The presenting juries of the townships have al-
ready been mentioned; it early seemed that such juries
from the four townships adjacent to the scene of the crime
would be a fit body to traverse the presentment which
perhaps they had already had their share in making.
The duties and methods of a new local official, the coro-
ner,1 may have furthered, perhaps suggested, this prac-
tice. The coroner early ceased to be a justice, even in
petty cases, but his right to impanel a jury remained a
relic of his original and higher position. He became a
keeper of the pleas of the crown,2 by which, was meant
that he held preliminary inquiries and kept records that
were to be used later by the visiting justices. Now the
juries which the coroners had used in such inquests were
supposed to have made some investigation of the crimes;
they would naturally have been drawn from the adjacent
townships, and might be resummoned to give their infor-
mation to the justices. It was also not uncommon to
hold the accusing jury of the hundred to answer concerning
the guilt or innocence of those whom they had presented.
1 See below, pp. 196-198.
2 The idea of crown pleas appears for the first time with any distinct-
ness in the reign of Cnute. A small number of serious cases was reserved
for the king, but it is hard to find a principle upon which the choice was
made, except, perhaps, a consideration of the revenue to be gained from
the fines and the limits imposed by the old conception of the king's peace.
The Norman dukes also had their reserved cases. In the private and un-
authorised collection of laws in Henry I. 's reign, known as the Leges Hen-
rid Primi, there is a long and heterogeneous list of crown cases, and, by
the large grants of jurisdiction which they sometimes made, the Norman
kings of England surely implied that they possessed an inclusive jurisdic-
tional power. With the drawing of the important criminal cases into the
royal court in the reign of Henry II., the idea was rapidly taking shape that
these crimes, wherever and whenever committed, were breaches of the
king's peace. The king's peace was becoming coterminous with the coun-
try, and all important breaches of it were crown cases. "I think we may
say that from the beginning of the thirteenth century onwards, all causes
that are regarded as criminal are pleas of the crown, placita corona, save
some petty offences which are still punished in the local courts, but even
over these the sheriff is now regarded as exercising a royal jurisdiction."
Maitland, C, H. -E., p. in. For the older conception of the king's peace,
see above, pp, 27, 28; for further discussion, P. and M, i., 44-46, and Mait-
land, op. tit., pp. 107-111.