"The right of the plaintiff and defendant, and of the prosecutor and criminal, to challenge the judices, (judges.) or assessors, [17] appointed to try the cause in civil matters, and to decide upon the guilt or innocence of the accused in criminal matters, is recognized in the treatise called the Laws of Henry the First; but I cannot discover, from the Anglo-Saxon laws or histories, that before the Conquest the parties had any general right of challege; indeed, had such right existed, the injunctions to all persons standing in the situation of judges (jurors) to do right according to their conscience, would scarcely have been so frequently and anxiously repeated." Spence, 456. Hale says: "The administration of the common justice of the kingdom seems to be wholly dispensed in the county courts, hundred courts, and courts-baron; except some of the greater crimes reformed by the laws of King Henry I., and that part thereof which was sometimes taken up by the Justitiarius Angliae. This doubtless bred great inconvenience, uncertainty, and variety in the laws, viz.: "First, by the ignorance of the judges, which were the freeholders of the county.* * "Thirdly, a third inconvenience was, that all the business of any moment was carried by parties and factions. For the freeholders being generally the judges, and conversing one among another, and being as it were the chief judges, not only of the fact, but of the law; every man that had a suit there, sped according as he could make parties." 1 Hale's History of the Common Law, p. 246. "In all these tribunals," (county court, hundred court, &c;..) "the judges were the free tenants, owing suit to the court, and afterwards called its peers." 1 Lingard's History of England, 488. Henry calls the twelve jurors "assessors," and says: "These assessors, who were in reality judges, took a solemn oath, that they would faithfully discharge the duties of their office, and not suffer an innocent man to be condemned, nor any guilty person to be acquitted." 3 Henry's History of Great Britain, 346. Tyrre11 says: "Alfred cantoned his kingdom, first into Trihings and Lathes, as they are still called in Kent and other places, consisting of three or four Hundreds; in which, the freeholders being judges, such causes were brought as could not be determined in the Hundred court." Tyrrell's Introduction to the History of England, p. 80. Of the Hundred Court he says: "In this court anciently, one of the principal inhabitants, called the alderman, together with the barons of the Hundred [18] id est the freeholders was judge." Ditto, p. 80. Also he says: "By a law of Edward the Elder, 'Every sheriff shall convene the people once a month, and do equal right to all, putting an end to controversies at times appointed.'" Ditto, p. 86.