In spite of all these considerations, the argument from devotion appears to be insufficient to meet the case, unless--an improbable event--the secular uses of the nave, which are about to be described, were the results of afterthought. Rightly to understand the problem, we must constantly recollect two staple facts: first, that the early churchmen were ever ready to adopt a compromise, and, secondly, that, especially during the Mediaeval period, there existed a close relationship between the secular and the religious aspects of social life. So many pieces of evidence have to be colligated to explain the working of these two principles, that it is difficult to make a beginning. But, since the question of compromise has already been dealt with in Chapter I., we may chiefly confine ourselves to the second point. On the whole, a start may best be made by reviewing the meetings, other than those strictly concerned with worship, which were held of old time in churches. Some of these meetings must have comprised far more able-bodied men than were ever collected together for a strictly religious celebration. In fact, a particular church may have had to shelter not only the inhabitants of the parish, but also the dwellers in several outlying parishes and hamlets. What business was it that gathered these folk together? When discussing pagan sites, we found that open-air courts, whether territorial, or composed of members of a free community, commonly met near some prominent landmark, natural or artificial (p. 34 _supra_). Of these objects, megalithic monuments--particularly menhirs and stone-circles--were much favoured. The stone-circles, as we saw, were in later days gradually abandoned, and the members of the community assembled in the churches. We should reasonably expect to discover evidence of overlapping of custom, and this is what we actually find. For, at a date when gatherings on mounds and within cromlechs are still sporadically recorded, we find frequent references to courts held in churches. Thus, during the Saxon period, trial by ordeal, which was deemed a religious transaction, was conducted by the priests in the parish church[320]. So early as A.D. 973, says Sir G. L. Gomme, a _gemōt_ was held in St Paul’s, London, while in A.D. 1293 a court met in Norham church, Northumberland[321]. The County Court, a very ancient body, presided over by the sheriff, was held in the Sheriff’s Court, or the Manor Court, but, if these were not convenient, the members assembled in the open air, or in the church[322]. The Welsh laws of the ninth and tenth centuries frequently refer to churches as courts of justice[323]. Relics, it was declared, were unnecessary at trials held in churches, for the church was the place of relics.