In the second place, it is manifest that the principles of law, by which the juries determined causes, were, as a general rule, nothing else than their own ideas of natural equity, _and not any laws of the king_; because but few laws were enacted, and many of those were not written, but only agreed upon in council.[46] Of those that were written, few copies only were made, (printing being then unknown,) and not enough to supply all, or any considerable number, of these numerous courts. Beside and beyond all this, few or none of the jurors could have read the laws, if they had been written; because few or none of the common people could, at that time, read. Not only were the common people unable to read their own language, but, at the time of Magna Carta, the laws were written in Latin, a language that could be read by few persons except the priests, who were also the lawyers of the nation. Mackintosh says, "the first act of the House of Commons composed and recorded in the English tongue," was in 1415, two centuries after Magna Carta.[47] Up to this time, and for some seventy years later, the laws were generally written either in Latin or French; both languages incapable of being read by the common people, as well Normans as Saxons; and one of them, the Latin, not only incapable of being read by them, but of being even understood when it was heard by them. To suppose that the people were bound to obey, and juries to enforce, laws, many of which were unwritten, none of which _they_ could read, and the larger part of which (those written in Latin) they could not translate, or understand when they heard them read, is equivalent to supposing the nation sunk in the most degrading slavery, instead of enjoying a liberty of their own choosing. Their knowledge of the laws passed by the king was, of course, derived only from oral information; and "_the good laws_," as some of them were called, in contradistinction to others--those which the people at large esteemed to be good laws--were doubtless enforced by the juries, and the others, as a general thing, disregarded.[48] That such was the nature of judicial proceedings, and of the power of juries, up to the time of Magna Carta, is further shown by the following authorities. "The sheriffs and bailiffs caused the free tenants of their bailiwics to meet at their counties and hundreds; _at which justice was so done, that every one so judged his neighbor by such judgment as a man could not elsewhere receive in the like cases_, until such times as the customs of the realm were put in writing, and certainly published. "And although a freeman commonly was not to serve (as a juror or judge) without his assent, nevertheless it was assented unto that free tenants should meet together in the counties and hundreds, and lords courts, if they were not specially exempted to do such suits, and _there judged their neighbors_."--_Mirror of Justices_, p. 7, 8.