It is very remarkable that a later development of the law in Denmark produced a similar change in the jury, the jurors not being chosen for a single cause, but for a period. In Jutland even “_Sandemænd_,” or jurors appointed by the crown, were instituted, who seem to have answered to the before-mentioned _Lag-men_, or _Lahmen_, in the north of England. Eight landed proprietors were selected in every district by the king, and discharged the office of jurymen for life, unless they forfeited it by some misdemeanour. Not the least trace is to be found in the old English laws and chronicles that the Danish laws in force in the Danelag were more barbarous than the contemporary Anglo-Saxon ones in the south of England. On the contrary, the fact lately mentioned, that the beneficial change in the composition and working powers of the jury, which had long been in force in Danish North England, was in far later times adopted in Norman England, seems rather to attest, in no slight degree, the superiority of the laws of the Danelag. On the whole, the Danish kings in England, and particularly Canute the Great, seem to have been excellent lawgivers. Canute’s laws respecting the limitation of capital punishment, the right of every man to hunt on his own land, and others, evince a mildness and humanity scarcely to be expected in those rude times. From what has been said, it appears that the Danish part of England must, in William the Conqueror’s time, have had just as many old Danish popular institutions as Normandy, nay, doubtless still more. It is, therefore, no wonder that William and his Normans were highly partial to the Danish laws then in force in England. Immediately after he assumed the reins of government, he commanded that these laws should be in force throughout the kingdom, and consequently even in the purely Anglo-Saxon districts, as both his own forefathers, and those of almost all his barons, had been Northmen, who had formerly emigrated from Norway. But in an assembly held at London in the fourth year of his reign, he suffered himself to be persuaded, by the urgent entreaties of the leading men among the Anglo-Saxons, to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor in the districts in which they had before prevailed. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Saxon laws gradually gave place to the Scandinavian institutions in force in the north of England. Thus duel, under the name of “trial by battle,” came to be considered throughout England as lawful proof in judicial suits; an evident result of the bold and chivalrous spirit of the new Norman lords. This kind of proof caused, however, much disturbance in England, and at length, though tardily, grew out of use. It was not formally abolished by law till the year 1818, after a prosecutor had challenged his adversary to trial by battle; a proceeding which even the legal tribunals were obliged to acknowledge that the law, taken in its strictest sense, fully authorised him in adopting.