'When the holy city of Jerusalem was won from the enemies of the cross, and restored to the true men of the Saviour, * * * when the princes and barons who conquered it had chosen, as king and lord of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Boulogne, * * * who was a man of understanding, and anxious to place the said kingdom in a good condition, and to have his people and all others who should come and go and dwell in the kingdom, guided, kept, ruled, sustained, held together, and judged according to justice and reason, he chose, upon the advice of the patriarch of the holy city and church of Jerusalem, and that of the princes, barons, and wisest men he could find, prudent men, whose business it should be to inquire and know from the people of various lands there present, what were the customs of their respective countries. All that these men could ascertain they wrote, or caused to be written, and laid before Duke Godfrey, who assembled the patriarch and the other people mentioned above, showed them the result, and caused the papers to be read to them. With their counsel and acquiescence he took from the report what seemed to him good, and made out from the same assizes and customs, which should be held, applied, and observed in the kingdom of Jerusalem.' Our author further tells us that both Godfrey himself and the later kings, in their diets of the kingdom, extended and improved these laws. The diets were generally held at Acre, at the season of the arrival of the pilgrims from Europe, as this gave opportunity to ascertain what was the law of their several homes in relation to the matter in question; and it is even said that messengers were sent over the sea expressly for this purpose. William of Tyre, the celebrated chronicler of the time, has preserved to us an interesting case of this special legislation. He says that after the conquest of the holy city, and return home of most of the pilgrims, the danger from the Saracens having become imminent, many of the newly invested feudal tenants began to desert their fiefs, upon which Godfrey issued the following assize: 'Whoever shall hold such deserted fief in possession for one year, shall be considered as having gained it by prescriptive right, and shall be defended in its possession against the previous owner who has deserted it.'