A statute, emphatically termed the ' Grand Assize,' enabled the defendant, if he thought proper, to abide by the testimony of the twelve good and lawful knights, chosen by four others of the vicinage, and whose oaths gave a final decision to the contested claim,." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, 261. "From the moment when the crown became accustomed to the 'Inquest,' a restraint was imposed upon every branch of the prerogative. The king could never be informed of his rights, but through the medium of the people. Every 'extent' by which he claimed the profits and advantages resulting from the casualties of tenure, every process by which he repressed the usurpations of the baronage, depended upon the 'good men and true' who were impaneled to 'pass' between the subject and the sovereign; and the thunder of the Exchequer at Westminster might be silenced by the honesty, the firmness, or the obstinacy, of one sturdy knight or yeoman in the distant shire. Taxation was controlled in the same manner by the voice of those who were most liable to oppression. * * A jury was impaneled to adjudge the proportion due to the sovereign; and this course was not essentially varied, even after the right of granting aids to the crown was fully acknowledged to be vested in the parliament of the realm. The people taxed themselves; and the collection of the grants was checked and controlled, and, perhaps, in many instances evaded, by these virtual representatives of the community. The principle of the jury was, therefore, not confined to its mere application as a mode of trying contested facts, whether in civil or criminal cases; and, both in its form and in its consequences, it had a very material influence upon the general constitution of the realm. * *The main-spring of the machinery of remedial justice existed in the franchise of the lower and lowest orders of the political hierarchy. Without the suffrage of the yeoman, the burgess, and the churl, the sovereign could not exercise the most important and most essential function of royalty; from them he received the power of life and death; he could not wield the sword of justice until the humblest of his subjects placed the weapon in his hand." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Constitution, 274 7. Coke says, "The court of the county is no court of record, [19] and the suitors are the judges thereof." 4 Inst.) 266. Also, "The court of the Hundred is no court of record, and the suitors be thereof judges." 4 Inst., 267. Also, "The court-baron is a court incident to every manor, and is not of record, and the suitors be thereof judges." 4 Inst., 268. Also, "The court of ancient demesne is in the nature of a court-baron, wherein the suitors are judges, and is no court of record." 4 Inst., 269. Millar says,