Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 118

From one common origin, therefore, we have derived several varieties of jury. On the criminal side the royal inquisition became the grand jury for presenting criminals, and when the older forms of trial ceased to function then a trial jury for indicted prisoners was assembled from the indictors and the neighbouring vills: simultaneously, many appellees avoided trial by battle by purchasing from the crown the privilege of a jury, and so we get the trial jury for felonies. On the civil side the royal inquisition became available to private litigants for the trial of right to real property, and the petty assizes, with the “grand assize”, were clearly the model for jury trial in writs of entry and other real actions. Somewhere between these two lines of development there lies the action of trespass. According to one view it derives from the appeals of felony; others trace it to the petty assizes. However that may be, jury trial almost immediately became normal in trespass, both for the trial of misdemeanours and of torts. In the end, trespass and its derivatives supplanted the old real actions (and also the old personal actions of debt, detinue, etc.) with the result that all the civil trial juries now in use descend directly from the jury in trespass, as likewise the juries for the trial of misdemeanours.