250 HAR YARD LA W RE VIE W. sitio. The characteristic of it is that the judge summons a number of the members of the community, selected by him as having pre- sumably a knowledge of the facts in question, and takes of them a promise to declare the truth on the questions to be put by him. . . . This inquisition . . . was applied both in legal controversy and in administration, and we must observe that the departments of administration and justice were then considerably united." After the conquest of Neustria by Rollo the Norman, in 912, that province, although having new rulers, retained its old institutions. As it has been well observed, where the laws of the conqueror, the Normans, were so nearly related in their basis to those of the region to which they had come, the two "could not long exist by the side of each other. The less cultivated must be absorbed by the other, and the narrower the fundamental difference the quicker the process of absorption" (Schw. 129-30). Thus the Norman law was mainly Frankish law ; and with the rest we find there the inquisition. Where royal power was vigorous, as among the Franks, it re- quired skfer and directer ways of settling those matters of fact on which its revenues depended than the rude, superstitious, one-sided methods which were followed in the popular courts. In a capitu- lary of Louis le D6bonnaire, in 829, 1 it is ordered that every inquiry relating to the royal fisc shall be made, not by witnesses brought forward [by the party], but per illos qui in eo comitatu me~ liores et veraciores esse cognoscuntur, — per illorum testimonium inquisitio Jiat, et juxta quod illi inde testificati fuerint, vel contine- antur vel reddantur. This, it will be noticed, is not merely ascer- taining facts, it is determining controversy by a mode of " trial ; " taxes are laid, services exacted, personal status fixed, on the sworn answer of selected persons of a certain neighborhood. Such per- sons were likely to know who was in possession of neighboring land and by what title ; they knew the consuetudines of the region, the free or servile status of the neighbors, their birth, death, or marriage. An enlightened principle had now come in as regards revenue which was likely to extend and did extend to judicature, for that was only another part of royal administration. 2 1 Baluze, i. 673, vi. ; Anc. Lois Franc, i. 69; Brunner, Schw. 88, note. 9 " So intimate is the connection of judicature with finance under the Norman kings that we scarcely need the comments of the historians to guide us to the conclusion that it was mainly for the sake of the profits that justice was administered at all." Stubbs, Const. Hist. Eng. i. 385-6.
