355
the sheriff. Such the
which determined in perpetuity between litigants the
better right to land.1 Apparently from the start the
choice of this jury was removed one step from the
four knights, undoubtedly named by the sheriff,
twelve knights, usually' including " themselves.2
was a momentous beginning. In these great
itcrs which were beginning late in the twelfth century,
the hundred juries often had to give information upon
revenue and general administrative matters which would
closely touch the sheriff's work, Xote the way in
such juries were to be for the iter of 1194:
In the first place there are to be chosen four
the whole county, who upon their oath shall
lawful knights from each hundred or wapentake,
two shall choose upon their oath un knights from the sev-
eral hundreds or wapentakes: or. if knights be lacking, law-
ful and free men, so that thest twelve may at the
make answer upon all the heads for the whole hundred or
wapentake.
These jurors were put a step further iron: the sheriff.3
The reference to the coroners in this same commission to
the itinerant justices in 1194 is in these words: "More-
over, in each county let there be chosen three knights
and one clerk keepers of the pleas of the crown." As
has been shown coroners were made for the of
cutting in on the she-rills' powers.4 We only to go
a little ways in the thirteenth century to find proof
coroners were regularly elected in the county courts,
it is probable that they were so from the start.
1 See above, p. 148.
2 In practice they often chose sixteen* sometimes as as twenty,
to provide against the challenges of the tenant who might not be present
at the election. Sometimes six or more electors were named by the sheriff,
but four was the rule,
* A, and S., document 21; W. and X,, pp. 92, 93. One must read through
the articles of this eyre to understand the king's anxiety to get impartial
juries, free from shrieval influence,
4 See above, p. 196.