of judicature were ruled by foreigners and the foreign tongue. The Barons, as they retired into the provinces and to the estates allotted them, naturally bore with them a Norman retinue. All their surroundings became quickly the same. Thus the French language was used not merely in their common conversation—that of course—but so far as their power, undoubtedly large, existed, in the provincial courts also. Such entries as ‘Thomas le Shirreve’ and ‘Lena le Shireve’ remind us not merely of our present existing ‘Sheriffs,’ ‘Sherrifs,’ and ‘Shreeves,’ but how firmly this Saxon word has maintained its hold through the many fluctuations of English government. The Norman ‘Judge,’ though it is firmly established in our courts of law, has not made any very great impress upon our nomenclature. ‘Justice,’ a relic of ‘William’ or ‘Eva le Justice,’[162] is more commonly met with. Our ‘Corners,’ when not descendants of the local ‘de la Corners’ of the thirteenth century, are but corruptions of many a ‘John le Coroner’ or ‘Henry le Corouner’ of the same period. It is even found in the abbreviated form of ‘Corner,’ in ‘John le Corner’ and ‘Walter le Cornur.’ Thus we see that so early as this our forefathers discerned in the death of a subject a matter that concerned not merely the well-being of the crown, but that of which the crown as the true parent of a nation’s interests was to take cognizance. More directly opposed to the Norman ‘Judge’ and ‘Justice,’ and in the end displaced by them, were our Saxon ‘Demer’ and ‘Dempster’ (the older forms being ‘le Demere’ and ‘le Demester’), they who pronounced the doom. An old English Psalter thus translates Psalm cxlviii. 11:— Kinges of earth, and alle folk living, Princes and all _demers_ of land. An antique poem, too, has it in its other form in the following couplet:— Ayoth was then _demester_ Of Israel foure score yeer. We still employ the term ‘doom’ for judgment. Chaucer speaks familiarly of one of the Canterbury company as a ‘Serjeant of the Lawe.’ It is, in the majority of cases, to the term ‘sergeant’ as used in this capacity we owe our much-varied ‘Sargants,’ ‘Sargeants,’ ‘Sargeaunts,’ ‘Sargents,’ ‘Sergents,’ ‘Sergeants,’ ‘Sarjants,’ and ‘Sarjeants.’ The same poet says of him:— Justice he was full often in assize, By patent and by pleine commission. ‘Alured le Pledur,’ or ‘Henry le Pleidour,’ and ‘Peter le Escuzer,’ all obsolete as surnames, need little or no explanation. Speaking of assizes, we are reminded of our ‘Sisers’ and ‘Sizers,’ representatives of the old ‘Assizer’—he who was commissioned to hold the court. Piers Plowman frequently mentions him:—