Barons of England

Article 11 of the Barons had demanded that no villa should be amerced for failure to make illegal repairs, thus illustrating at once John’s policy, and the point of connection between this provision and the immediately preceding chapters which dealt with amercements.

Pike, House of Lords, 256–7, shows how barons were assessed sometimes—(a) before the barons of exchequer;

“If a baron was to be amerced for a small trespass, his amercement was wont to be 100s.

The barons and people having obtained by the charter all the liberties they had demanded of the king, it was further [25] provided by the charter itself that twenty-five barons should be appointed by the barons, out of their number, to keep special vigilance in the kingdom to see that the charter was observed, with authority to make war upon the king in case of its violation.

The barons of England, sustained by the common people, having their king in their power, compelled him, as the price of his throne, to pledge himself that he would punish no freeman for a violation of any of his laws, unless with the consent of the peers—that is, the equals—of the accused.

The question here arises, Whether the barons and people intended that those peers (the jury) should be mere puppets in the hands of the king, exercising no opinion of their own as to the intrinsic merits of the accusations they should try, or the justice of the laws they should be called on to enforce?

When the bishops and clergy of this country struggled to introduce this principle of the Canon law into the English common law, it was rejected by the barons of England.