Barons of England

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

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

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.

Did it not rather imply that the jury were to judge independently and fearlessly as to everything involved in the charge, and especially as to its intrinsic justice, and thereon give their decision, (unbiased by any legislation of the king,) whether the accused might be punished?

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.