Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/390

374 HARVARD LA W REVIEW. so the extreme severity and unfitness of the punishment. The punishment mentioned by Glanville (lib. ii. c. 19) three centuriea before continued to be applied in the attaint, and was even increased; the convicted juryman frost all his movable goods to the king ; he was imprisoned for a year at least ; he lost his lex terrae and became infamous. Bracton (292^) repeats this in substance, making their lands and chattels seized by the king until redeemed, and adds, " Never thereafter may they be received to an oath for they shall not afterwards be othesworth." It came also to be expressed as a part of the judgment that their wives and chil- dren should be turned out of doors, and their lands laid waste. The wisdom of providing some milder punishment was seen. Accordingly in 1495 (St. 11 H. VII. c. .21) in providing the attaint for the first time, in the case of inquests in London, the punishment is limited to a fine of twenty pounds, "or more, by the discretion of the mayor or aldermen," imprisonment for six months or less, and " to be disabled forever to be sworn in any jury before any temporal judge." In the same year {ib. c. 24) there is a general statute which was afterwards continued several times, and then, having expired, was temporarily revived in 1531, by St. 23 H. VIII. c. 3, and finally made perpetual in 1571 by St. 13 Eliz. c. 25. 1 It continued in substance to be the law governing this matter until the abolition of attaints in 1825. This statute after the usual recital of continuing perjury [of jurors] and its mischiefs, provides that a party grieved by an untrue verdict, where the demand and verdict reach forty pounds shall have an attaint jury of the same number as heretofore. The petit jury shall (with certain exceptions) have no answer except that their verdict was true. If the issue be found against them they shall be fined twenty pounds, one-half for the king, the other for the party suing. They shall also "make fine and ransom by the discretion of the justices ; " and they " shall never after be of any evidence, nor their oath accepted in any court." The party may plead any good bar to the attaint, but that is not to delay the trial of the petit jury's plea and issue. If the party's plea, what- ever it be, is found against him, then the plaintiff in attaint is " to be restored to that he lost with his reasonable costs and dam- 1 " Made in favor of the subjects, namely, for the qualification of the rigorous and terrible judgment of the common law in attaint," said the court in Austen v. Baker, Dyer 201a (1561).