_P._ This is just as if he had said, that two courts did warrant their own way of trial; but other courts not so, but were warranted by the King: only the courts of common-law were warrants to themselves. You see that _alia curia_ is this way ill expounded. In the courts of common-law all trials are by twelve men, who are judges of the fact; and the fact known and proved, the judges are to pronounce the law; but in the spiritual court, the Admiralty, and in all the courts of Equity, there is but one judge, both of fact and of law; this is all the difference. If this difference be intended by the statute by _alia curia_, there would be a præmunire for suing in a court, being not the King’s Court. The King’s Bench and Court of Common Pleas may also be different kinds of courts, because the process is different. But it is plain that this statute doth not distinguish courts otherwise than into the courts of the King, and into the courts of the foreign states and princes. And seeing you stand upon the name of a jury for the distinguishing of courts, what difference do you find between the trials at the common-law, and the trials in other courts? You know that in trials of fact naturally, and through all the world, the witnesses are judges, and it is impossible to be otherwise. What then in England can a jury judge of, except it be of the sufficiency of the testimony? The justices have nothing to judge of or do, but after the fact is proved, to declare the law; which is not judgment, but jurisdiction. Again, though the trial be in Chancery, or in the Court of civil law, the witnesses are still judges of the fact, and he that hath the commission to hear the cause, hath both the parts, that is to say, of a jury to judge of the testimony, and of a justice to declare the law. In this, I say, lies all the difference: which is indeed enough to make a dispute (as the world goes) about jurisdiction! But seeing it tends neither to the disherison of the King, nor of the people, nor to the subversion of the law of reason, that is of common-law, nor to the subversion of justice, nor to any harm of the realm, without some of which these statutes are not broken; it cannot be a præmunire. _L._ Let me read on. _For if the freehold, inheritances, goods and chattels, debts and duties, wherein the King and subject have right and property by the common-law, should be judged per aliam legem, or be drawn ad aliud examen, the three mischiefs afore expressed would follow; viz. the destruction of the King and his crown, the disherison of his people, and the undoing and destruction of the common-law always used._