Criminal Law, United Kingdom Court System, Medieval law, Jury, United Kingdom Common Law, Common law, Court systems, Juries 

"Twelve Good Men and True bring together some of the most ambitious and innovative work yet undertaken on the history of an English legal institution. These eleven essays examine the composition of the criminal trial jury in England, the behavior of those who sat as jurors, and popular and official attitudes toward the institution of the jury trial from its almost accidental emergence in the early thirteenth century until 1800. The essays have important implications for three problems central to the history of criminal justice administration in England: The way in which the medieval jury was informed and reached its verdict; the degree and form of independence enjoyed by juries during the early modern period when the powers of the bench were very great; and the role of the eighteenth-century trial jury which, although clearly independent, was, by virtue of the status and experience of tis members, arguably a mere extension of the bench..." - cover  

Contents:
The early-thirteenth-century criminal jury / Roger D. Groot -- Juror attitudes toward local disorder: the evidence of the 1328 trailbaston proceedings / Bernard William McLane -- Jury lists and juries in the late fourteenth century / J.B. Post -- Jury trial at Gaol delivery in the late middle ages: the midland circuit, 1400-1429 / Edward Powell -- Lawless juries? The composition and behavior of Hertforshire juries, 1573-1624 / P.G. Lawson -- Twelve silly men? The trial jury at assizes, 1560-1670 / J.S. Cockburn -- Juries and the middling sort: recruitment and performance at Devon quarter sessions, 1649-1670 / Stephen K. Roberts -- London juries in the 1690s / J.M. Beattie -- "Illiterate plebeians, easily misled": jury composition, experience, and behavior in Essex, 1735-1815 / P.J.R. King -- The class composition of the Palladium of liberty: trial jurors in the eighteenth century / Douglas Hay -- A retrospective on the criminal trial jury, 1200-1800 / Thomas A. Green. 

Catalogued by editor