Note 820 — Chapter V

I do not mean to say that the analytical distinctions which we make between fact and law, between presenters to a tribunal and assessors of a tribunal, were clearly perceived or consequently carried out in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. On the contrary there was a good deal of confusion in details, and the instinctive logic of facts had more to do in dividing and settling institutions than conscious reasoning. Juries and assizes of the Royal Courts might be called upon incidentally to decide legal questions, but, in the aggregate, there can be hardly a doubt that the sworn inquests before the Royal judges were working to provide the Courts with a knowledge of local facts and perhaps conditions, while the manorial court gave legal decisions.