Law Courts 163
notorious felons, but the completeness with which It was
abandoned shows how it ran counter to the ideas of the
time. The state handled minor suspects, who refused a
jury, by forcing them to give pledge or even leave the
country; but it was not considered that a conviction had
taken place. Thus when suspected felons refused a Jury,
they remained technically unconvicted and their property,
both real and personal, could not be confiscated or their
blood attainted; the consequences of their crimes could
not be visited upon their heirs. There was thus a strong
motive for continued refusal in instances where conviction
was a foregone conclusion. In these cases pledge or exile
was insufficient; the state could do nothing but keep the
men in prison until they consented to put themselves
upon the country. There was reason therefore for mak-
ing the imprisonment as terrible as possible, and from
the ''strong and hard" prison of the thirteenth century
there came by a natural evolution the horrible peine
forte et dure which was not abolished until 1772.* It
should be understood that, in the vast majority of cases,
those indicted for crime willingly accepted jury trial.
We come now to the second important matter in jury
history after Henry II.'s reign. How did it come to pass
that the judicial jury became in England a feature of
government by the people, while on the continent the
same parent stock brought forth the canonical inquisition,
an institution so opposite in character? The early thir-
teenth century was a critical time for the English jury;
the young institution was pliable, and the influences of
that time largely determined its future history. It but
narrowly missed travelling the road of its continental
cousin. The most prominent trait of all early juries was
their supposed or actual knowledge of the facts sought;
and when juries became a regular part of judicial pro-
cedure, one is likely to think that they were nothing more
1 Pressing (with weights **as heavy, yea, heavier than he can bear"), as
a means of making a man voluntarily (!) answer "By God and my coun-
try11 to the question "How will you be tried?", was used as early as 1302,
and became the commonest method.