cular house but allowed a latitude of choice within that house. The
community was divided into Thames or gentry, Ceorls or freemen, and
serfs. The ceorls tended to sink to the position known later as
villeinage. The composition of the king's great council called the
Witenagemot is doubtful. The country was divided into shires, the shire
into districts called hundreds, and the hundreds into tithings. There
appears to be no adequate authority for the idea that trial by jury was
practised; the prevailing characteristic of justice was the system of
penalty by fine, and the responsibility of the tithing for the misdeeds
of any of its members. There is no direct evidence as to the extent to
which feudal tenures were beginning to be established before the Norman
conquest.

The Norman conquest involved a vast confiscation of property and the
exclusion of the native English from political privileges. The feudal
system of land tenure was established; but its political aspect here and
in France was quite different. There were no barons with territories
comparable to those of the great French feudataries. That the government
was extremely tyrannical is certain. The Crown derived its revenues from
feudal dues, customs duties, tallages--that is, special charges on
particular towns,--and the war tax called the Danegelt; all except the
first being arbitrary taxes. The violence of King John led to the demand
of the barons for the Great Charter, the keystone of English liberty,
securing the persons and property of all freemen from arbitrary
imprisonment or spoliation. Thenceforth no right of general taxation is
claimed. The barons held themselves warranted in refusing supplies.

The King's Court was gradually separated into three branches, King's
Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. The advance in the study of law had
the definite effect of establishing a fixed rule of succession to the
Crown. One point must still be noticed which distinguishes England from
other European countries; that the law recognises no distinction of
class among freemen who stand between the peers and villeins.

The reign of Edward I. forms an epoch. The Confirmation of the Charters
put an end to all arbitrary taxation; and the type of the English
Parliament was fixed. In the Great Councils the prelates and greater
barons had assembled, and the lesser barons were also summoned; the term
baron being equivalent to tenant in chief. A system of representation is
defi