The confusion of _duties_ attributed to these officers indicates clearly enough that different officers, bearing, the same official names, must have had different duties, and have derived their authority from different sources,--to wit, the king, and the people.] [Footnote 88: _Darrein presentment_ was an inquest to discover who presented the last person to a church; _mort de ancestor_, whether the last possessor was seized of land in demesne of his own fee; and _novel disseisin_, whether the claimant had been unjustly disseized of his freehold.] [Footnote 89: He has no power to do it, _either with, or without, the king's command_. The prohibition is absolute, containing no such qualification as is here interpolated, viz., "_without the king's command_." If it could be done _with_ the king's command, the king would be invested with arbitrary power in the matter.] [Footnote 90: The absurdity of this doctrine of Coke is made more apparent by the fact that, at that time, the "justices" and other persons appointed by the king to hold courts were not only dependent upon the king for their offices, and removable at his pleasure, _but that the usual custom was, not to appoint them with any view to permanency, but only to give them special commissions for trying a single cause, or for holding a single term of a court, or for making a single circuit; which, being done, their commissions expired_. The king, therefore, could, _and undoubtedly did, appoint any individual he pleased, to try any cause he pleased, with a special view to the verdicts he desired to obtain in the particular cases_. This custom of commissioning particular persons to hold jury trials, in _criminal_ cases, (and probably also in _civil_ ones,) was of course a usurpation upon the common law, but had been practised more or less from the time of William the Conqueror. Palgrave says: