Secunda, and bounded on the south by the Thames, and on the north by the Mersey and the Humber); 4. Maxima Cæsariensis (between the Humber and the Mersey, and Hadrian's Wall); and 5. Valentia (from Hadrian's Wall to the Wall of Antoninus). A sixth province, Vespasiana, lying to the north of the Wall of Antoninus, is mentioned by early writers; but the district thus situated was never long under the Roman dominion.

Each of the five provinces named above had its principal town, which was the seat of government. The three first were under the rule of Præsides (presidents); the two last under Consulares (consular officers); and the whole were governed by a supreme officer styled the Vicarius (deputy), who resided at York, and was himself subject to the Prefect of Gaul. There were three chief military officers-the Comes Britanniarum (Count of the Britons), who was Commanderin-Chief of the forces; the Dux Britanniarum (Duke of the Britons), charged with the defence of Hadrian's Wall against the Picts and Scots; and the Comes Littoris Saxonici (Count of the Saxon Shore), who kept the coast from Brancaster to Pevensey against the Saxon pirates.

The towns were divided into Municipia, Colonie, Civitates Latio jure donatæ, and Civitates Stipendiariæ. The first and second were chiefly inhabited by Romans, the third and fourth by a mixed population. The difference between the Municipia and Colonie was slight in both the inhabitants had the rights of Roman citizens, chose their own magistrates, and enacted their own laws. The Civitates Latio jure donate ranked below these; but they possessed certain privileges enjoyed by the ancient inhabitants of Latium, which raised them above the Stipendiarie. The Stipendiariæ were the lowest of all, and the inhabitants paid tribute. For the names of the different towns, thirty-three of which have been preserved, the reader is referred to the map of Britain during the Roman period.*

The Anglo-Saxon Period.—During the period which preceded the dissolution of the Heptarchy the forms of government of England

* The Latin titles of these towns are as follows:-Municipia (2): Eboracum, Verulamium. Coloniæ (9): Londinium, Camalodunum, Rutupiæ, Aquæ Solis, Isca Silurum, Lindum, Deva, Glevum, and Camboricum. Civitates Latio jure donatæ (10) Durnomagus or Durobrivæ, Catarractonum, Cambodunum, Coccium, Luguvallium, Theodosia (Dumbarton), Pteroton (Burgh Head, Morayshire), Victoria (Dealgin Ross, Perthshire), Corinium, and Sorbiodunum. Stipendiariæ (12): Venta Belgarum, Venta Icenorum, Venta Silurum, Segontium, Maridunum, Rage or Ratæ, Durovernum, Durinum or Durnovaria, Isca Dumnoniorum, Bremenium, Vindonum, and Durobrivæ. The names of the supposed English equivalent towns are given on the map of Roman Britain.

were variable and uncertain. With the union of the seven kingdoms under Egbert, the Anglo-Saxon constitution may be said to have solidified. Under this the kingly dignity was elective; that is to say, the monarch was chosen by the nation. As a general rule, however, the nation elected the nearest heir, so that practically the succession was hereditary. The princes of the royal house were denominated Athelings.

The people were divided into three classes-the eorls, nobles or gentry (with whom the clergy ranked); the ceorls, churls or yeomen; and the theowes, or serfs. The executive government belonged almost entirely to the first class, which included several grades, the highest of which, the aldormen, came next to royalty. Towards the close of the Anglo-Saxon period the bulk of the eorls came gradually to be known by the name of thanes.

The highest tribunal was the Witanagemot, or Witan (assembly of wise men). This was convened at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and consisted chiefly of the nobility and clergy. It was an essentially aristocratic body, in which the churls had no place. It elected the king, who presided over it, made laws, levied taxes, raised land and sea forces, and concluded treaties. Every man could petition the Witanagemot, and it was the supreme court of justice, both in civil and criminal causes.

The country was divided into counties (as at present), and these were subdivided into hundreds and tithings, the last being a union of ten families, every member of which was responsible for all the rest. This system of police was termed frankpledge, but its operation is involved in obscurity. Each of the above-named three divisions had its court of justice-viz., the shire-mote, or county court; the hundred-mote, or hundred court; and the hall-mote, or manor court-thus affording a graduated scale of courts from the supreme Witan downwards.

The most ordinary modes of trial were by compurgation, or wager of law, and by ordeal, or judgment of God. By the first the accused was acquitted if he produced a number of compurgators, or fellowswearers, who deposed upon oath to their belief in his innocence. Where this method was not held to be satisfactory, recourse was had to trial by ordeal. This was of two kinds-by fire and by water. In the ordeal by fire, the accused was obliged to carry a bar of red-hot iron for a certain distance, or to walk blindfold upon redhot ploughshares; in the ordeal by water, he was obliged to plunge his arm into boiling water, or was cast bound into a river or pond. If he sustained the first three tests without injury, or if he sank in

the last, he was acquitted: if not, he was condemned to pay the penalty of the offence. The whole of the ordeal was superintended hy a priest, and it is probable that the issue lay in his hands. A third mode of trial by ordeal, the administration of the corsned, or morsel of execration,' was also practised. The accused was required to swallow a piece of consecrated bread or cheese, which, if he were guilty, was expected to choke him.

The chief punishments were fines. These varied according to the magnitude of the offence. For murder there was a settled tariff determining the value of a life in each degree.

The Norman Period.-After the Norman Conquest the system of land-tenure known as the Feudal System, which already prevailed on the Continent, and, indeed, upon a limited scale, among the Anglo-Saxons themselves, was established in England. Under this the sovereign became the supreme lord of the soil, which he parcelled out in fiefs to his vassals, who, in return, engaged to supply him with military service during a given period of the year, to protect his family and person, and to aid him with their counsel. Various money payments were claimed in addition from the vassal under the heads of aids, primer seisin or first fruits, reliefs, and fines for alienation. The wardship of minors and the right to dispose of them in marriage also belonged to the lord of the land; and if the vassal died without heirs, or committed any crime, the land returned to the lord by escheat.

The immediate tenants of the crown were termed tenants in capite, or in chief. These tenants-in-chief again assigned their lands to inferior tenants, on terms akin to those on which they held them. William the Conqueror greatly increased the regal power under the feudal system, by requiring the oath of fealty from these inferior tenants, as well as the tenants-in-chief. As a general rule of feudalism, the vassal only took the oath to the lord from whom he held.

Conjoined to the feudal system, and to some extent dependent on it, were the rigorous Forest Laws of the Norman kings. The Saxons had protected their forests; but now, to use Blackstone's words, the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man.' Happily, at the present time only a trace of them survives in the game laws. But under the monarch who loved the tall deer as if he were their father,' whole districts were depopulated and despoiled to make him parks and chases.

To the Witanagemot of the Saxon period corresponded, in a

measure, under the Normans, the Aula, or Curia Regis (King's Court), by which the king was assisted in making laws. Like the Saxon great council, it met at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and was composed chiefly of the clergy and the tenants-in-chief. It was not, like the Witanagemot, the supreme tribunal; but a committee of it, presided over by an officer styled the Grand Justiciary, and resembling our Lord Chief Justice, attended the king on all occasions to hear cases of appeal from the inferior courts. This committee gradually gave rise to our present courts of Exchequer, Common Pleas, Queen's Bench, and Chancery. Another alteration, conceded by the Conqueror to the Popish clergy, was the removal to a separate tribunal of spiritual cases, which in Anglo-Saxon times had been tried with the lay cases in the county courts. These last, with the hundred and manor courts, still continued to exist during the Norman Period.

The Normans added another form of trial to those in use among the Saxons. This was the wager of battle. It resembled the duel of modern times, and the result was held to establish the guilt or innocence of the person accused.

The House of Plantagenet."-The power of the Pope in England had greatly increased during the Norman period, and by the commencement of the Plantagenet era the Church had usurped various important privileges. It claimed, in addition, the right of punishing the crimes of its members, but exercised it with so much indulgence that their lawlessness became notorious, and no less than 100 murders were committed by the clergy alone in the first ten years of Henry II.'s reign.

Henry II. was the first king who opposed these ecclesiastical encroachments, and his opposition was stimulated by the difficulties placed in his way by Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, he succeeded in passing the famous Constitutions of Clarendon (1164). Among other things, it was enacted by these, that clergy accused of any crime should be tried by civil judges; that no chief tenant of the crown should be excommunicated, or his lands put under interdict; that bishops should be regarded as barons, and be subjected to the burthens belonging to that rank; that no persons of any rank (and clergymen especially) should leave the realm without the royal licence; that appeals from the spiritual courts should be

*In which the Houses of York and Lancaster are included.

carried to the king, and not to the Pope; and that the clergy should no longer pretend to the right of enforcing debts contracted by oaths or promise. To these Constitutions Becket gave a reluctant assent; and, although they were not always carried out in succeeding reigns, they must, nevertheless, be regarded as the first important measure of ecclesiastical reform.

The next notable act of Henry was the division of the country into six circuits, and the appointment of justices in eyre or in itinere, who travelled them for the purpose of trying cases (1176). This step was well timed. The before-mentioned committee of the Curia Regis was difficult of access and unsatisfactory in operation; the county courts of the preceding periods were growing obsolete; and Trial by Jury, to which the system of visiting judges gave great facilities, was about to supersede the Norman custom of ordeal by battle.

It will not be necessary to trace the origin of Trial by Jury in Anglo-Saxon times. The 'Assize of novél disseisin' in Henry's reign was the first real approach to the now existing form. By this a suitor in civil cases who was unwilling to risk the ordeal by battle might refer his case to the verdict of a jury, who based their decision, not on the evidence of witnesses, but on their personal knowledge of the facts. It was not until the reign of Edward III. that the witness and the juryman became distinct, and even long after this time the jurors were permitted to be individually acquainted with the circumstances of the case.

We now come to the most important constitutional event of the Plantagenet era-the signing of Magna Charta (1215), which was brought about, under Henry's second son, John, by the increasing rigour of the forest laws and feudal tenures, and by the extortions and oppressions of John himself. The barons, under the generalship of Stephen Langton, the Primate, and William, Earl of Pembroke (names which should be memorable in English mouths), obliged John to sign a charter at Runnymede, which is regarded as the bulwark of English liberties. By the chief provisions of this, (1) no scutage or aid could be imposed but by the common council of the kingdom; (2) common pleas were not to follow the court, but to be held in some certain place; (3) no freeman could be apprehended, imprisoned, disseised of his freehold, outlawed, exiled, or sentenced, except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or the law of the land; (4) justice or right could neither be sold, delayed, nor denied to any man; (5) all freemen might quit or return to the realm at pleasure; (6) no freeman could be fined excessively; and