bsence of direct evidence. Written laws were modified
and controlled by customs of which no trace can be discovered, until
after the lapse of centuries, although those usages must have been in
constant vigor during the long interval of silence."--_1 Palgrave's Rise
and Progress of the English Commonwealth_, 58-9.]

[Footnote 43: Rapin says, "The customs now practised in England are, for
the most part, the same as the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from
Germany."--_Rapin's Dissertation on the Government of the Anglo-Saxons_,
vol. 2, Oct. Ed., p. 198. See _Kelham's Discourse before named_.]

[Footnote 44: Hallam says, "The county of Sussex contains sixty-five
('hundreds'); that of Dorset forty-three; while Yorkshire has only
twenty-six; and Lancashire but six."--_2 Middle Ages_, 391.]

[Footnote 45: Excepting also matters pertaining to the collection of the
revenue, which were determined in the king's court of exchequer. But
even in this court it was the law "_that none be amerced but by his
peers_."--_Mirror of Justices_, 49.]

[Footnote 46: "For the English laws, _although not written_, may, as it
should seem, and that without any absurdity, be termed laws, (since this
itself is law--that which pleases the prince has the force of law,) I
mean those laws which it is evident were promulgated by the advice of
the nobles and the authority of the prince, concerning doubts to be
settled in their assembly. For if from the mere want of writing only,
they should not be considered laws, then, unquestionably, writing would
seem to confer more authority upon laws themselves, than either the
equity of the persons constituting, or the reason of those framing
them."--_Glanville's Preface_, p. 38. (Glanville was chief justice of
Henry II., 1180.) _2 Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons_, 280.]

[Footnote 47: Mackintosh's History of England, ch. 3. Lardner's Cabinet
Cyclopaedia, 266.]

[Footnote 48: If the laws of the king were received as authoritative by
the juries, what occasion was there for his appointing special
commissioners for the trial of offences, without the intervention of a
jury, as he frequently did, in manifest and acknowledged violation of
Magna Carta, and "the law of the land?" These appointments were
undoubtedly made for no other reason than that the juries were not
sufficiently subservient, but judged according to their own notions of
right, instead of the will of the king--whether the latter were
expressed in