Before passing to a notice of the law book of the Crusaders, it is necessary to premise a brief statement of the political condition upon which this system of law was based, since it is only by knowing this that we can understand the laws. When the Christian kingdom of Asia was in its bloom, it consisted of four provinces, viz.: 1, the principality of Antioch; 2, the duchy of Edessa; 3, the principality of Syria or Jerusalem; and 4, the duchy of Tripolis. These four formed the kingdom of Jerusalem, of which they were feudal dependencies. The principality of Jerusalem was the home domain of the king of Jerusalem, as Hugh Capet, for instance, was duke of France and king in France. The kings of Jerusalem, like those of France, surrounded themselves with four crown officers, viz.: the seneschal, constable, marshal, and chamberlain, whose authority and influence were the same as those of the name in Europe. Each of the above-named divisions was again subdivided into baronies and greater fiefs, the holders of which were called 'men of the kingdom.' The lower vassals were designated by the name of 'liegemen.' Among them were, however, included the immediate servants of the king, ranking with the class from which higher officials are taken in Europe. The king executed justice in a court constituted of peers, and called the high court,[3] and the laws which governed its decisions were called 'assizes of the high court.'[4] Those barons who held courts and administered justice to their vassals scattered over the land, of which there were twenty-two in the principality of Syria, based their decisions also upon these assizes; they did not, however, sit in their own right as patrimonial judges, but by royal concession, and the king could at any time he chose preside over these courts, associating with himself any number of his liegemen to sit with him. Besides these noble vassals, called also the 'chivalry of the kingdom,'[5] there was a very considerable Latin population who held no fiefs, but still were perfectly free men, and were designated as citizens.[6] We find in our work no statement of their political relations; we only know that they had their own law, and that in the issue of the ordinances for the government of their towns or cities, they had a right to participate, and were obliged, in case of need in the land of Jerusalem, to furnish, as were also the clergy, a certain quota of foot soldiers. To this Latin population justice was administered by a court of sworn burghers, presided over in Jerusalem itself by the viscount of the kingdom, and elsewhere by the viscounts or bailiffs of the several cities. Of these courts there were thirty-seven in the principality of Jerusalem. This was called the lower court, or court of the burghers, and the laws which formed its rule of judgment, 'the assizes of the burghers' court.'