"If any duke, marquis, or any other of the degrees of a baron, or above, lord of the Parliament, be appeached of treason, or any other capital crime, he is judged by his peers and equals; that, is, the yeomanry doth not go upon him, but an inquest of the Lords of Parliament, and they give their voice not one for all, but each severally as they do in Parliament being (beginning) at the youngest lord. And for judge one lord sitteth, who is constable of England for that day. The judgment once given, he breaketh his staff, and abdicateth his office. In the rest there is no difference from that above written," (that is, in the case of a freeman.) p. 98. [25] "The present form of the jurors' oath is that they shall 'give a true verdict according to the evidence.' At what time this form was introduced is uncertain; but for several centuries after the Conquest, the jurors, both in civil and criminal cases, were sworn merely to speak the truth. (Glanville, lib. 2, cap. 17; Bracton, lib. 3, cap. 22; lib. 4, p. 287, 291; Britton, p. 135.) Hence their decision was accurately termed veredictum, or verdict, that is, ' a thing truly said'; whereas the phrase 'true verdict' in the modern oath is not an accurate expression." Political Dictionary, word Jury. [26] Of course, there can be no legal trial by jury, in either civil or criminal cases, where the jury are sworn to try the cases "according to law." [27] Coke, as late as 1588, admits that amercements must be fixed by the peers (8 Coke's Rep. 88, 2 Inst. 27); but he attempts, wholly without success, as it seems to me, to show a difference between fines and amercements. The statutes are very numerous, running through the three or four hundred years immediately succeeding Magna Carta, in which fines, ransoms, and amercements are spoken of as if they were the common punishments of offences, and as if they all meant the same thing. If, however, any technical difference could be made out between them, there is clearly none in principle; and the word amercement, as used in Magna Carta, must be taken in its most comprehensive sense. [28] "Common right" was the common law. 1 Coke's Inst. 142 a. 2 do. 55, 6.