The civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions were, it is well known, not separated in England until after the Conquest. William the Norman was the first to establish that most questionable division, the consequences of which were often so bitterly felt by his successors. Previous to his reign the bishop had been the assessor of the ealdorman in the scírgemót or county-court, and ecclesiastical causes, except such as were reserved for the decision of the episcopal synods, were subjected, like those of the laity, to the judgment of the scírþegnas or shire-thanes: thus even probate of wills was given in the county-court. This participation of bishops in the administration of justice, useful and necessary in the early ages of Christianity, was very probably derived from the functions of their heathen predecessors, the priests of the ancient gods. The old Germanic _placita_ were held, as is well known, under the presidency of the priests, and these were courts of law as well as courts of parliament. In fact there is no reason whatever to doubt that, long before the introduction of Christianity, the public pleadings were opened with religious ceremonies, and that the course of procedure was regulated by religious ideas[877]. The gods were present,—to secure the peaceful administration of justice, to sanction the finding of the freemen, to give a holy character to the act of _doing right_ between man and man,—to terrify the perjurer and the criminal,—perhaps to justify the extreme penalty of the law in extreme cases; for it is probable that to the gods alone could the life of a great wrongdoer be offered, as an atonement to the Law, of which God is the root and guardian. The institution of the ordeal by which it was superstitiously supposed that the Almighty would reveal the hidden truth or falsehood of men, further tended to connect, first the pagan and afterwards the Christian priesthood with the administration of justice. In that most solemn appeal to the omniscience and justice of God, the clergy necessarily took the prominent part; and although we cannot believe that they always resisted the temptation offered by that most strange juggle, it may charitably be asserted that their intervention not rarely saved the innocent from the penal consequences of an uncertain and painful test. ----- Footnote 877: “Omnis itaque concionis illius multitudo ex diversis partibus coacta, primo suorum proavorum servare contendit instituta, numinibus videlicet suis vota solvens ac sacrificia.” Hucbald. Vit. Lebwini, cap. xii. -----