Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the new edition, AD 2000
- Introduction to the 1975 edition of The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism
- PART I THE SEARCH FOR ANGLO-SAXON PAGANISM
- PART II ANGLO-SAXON TRIAL BY JURY
- 1 Jury: this palladium of our liberties, sacred and inviolate
- 2 Delivering the truth not the same as judging
- 3 Guilt and innocence a matter of conscience
- 4 ‘England's great and glorious Revolution’ (1688), its debt to Henry II's revival of ancient institutions fostering liberty
- 5 Trial by jury not a Proto-Germanic nor perhaps an Anglo-Saxon institution; but what of the twelve leading thegns of the wapentake?
- 6 Why promulgated at Wantage?
- 7 The twelve of the wapentake probably an institution for the Danelaw only
- 8 Conclusion
- I. Index of sources
- II. Index of scholars, critics, and authors
- III. General Index
8 - Conclusion
from PART II - ANGLO-SAXON TRIAL BY JURY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the new edition, AD 2000
- Introduction to the 1975 edition of The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism
- PART I THE SEARCH FOR ANGLO-SAXON PAGANISM
- PART II ANGLO-SAXON TRIAL BY JURY
- 1 Jury: this palladium of our liberties, sacred and inviolate
- 2 Delivering the truth not the same as judging
- 3 Guilt and innocence a matter of conscience
- 4 ‘England's great and glorious Revolution’ (1688), its debt to Henry II's revival of ancient institutions fostering liberty
- 5 Trial by jury not a Proto-Germanic nor perhaps an Anglo-Saxon institution; but what of the twelve leading thegns of the wapentake?
- 6 Why promulgated at Wantage?
- 7 The twelve of the wapentake probably an institution for the Danelaw only
- 8 Conclusion
- I. Index of sources
- II. Index of scholars, critics, and authors
- III. General Index
Summary
Trial by jury is important in the historical perception of English law. In that perception civil liberty was for a long time regarded as the supreme political aim of the English over the centuries. The meaning of ‘civil liberty’ has not been static since the term was first used in the seventeenth century. Milton's well-known use in the opening paragraph of Areopagitica almost amounts to a pragmatical definition of the concept:
when complaints are freely heard, deeply consider'd, and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for.
Perhaps what Milton has in mind would now be referred to as ‘civil liberties’ in the plural; and where he says ‘complaints’ more recent advocates of civil liberties might think and speak of ‘protests’. How fully civil liberty, in the singular, has been achieved and whether a country without written constitution can fully achieve civil liberty or civil liberties are questions that may not receive identical answers from within England and from without. England's partners in Europe and, very probably, the descendants of English settlers in what were once colonies in North America, especially the United States, may now give an answer different from that given as a matter of course in England. But on the whole foreign commentators have over the centuries admired the liberty enjoyed in England. Wise men and women, as they look for liberty, need look no further than English trial by jury.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Imagining the Anglo-Saxon PastThe Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and Anglo-Saxon Trial by Jury, pp. 146 - 148Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2000