3 o8 HAR YARD LA W RE VIE W. were serious questions, and some of them troubled the lawyers for centuries. 1 Let us look at some of the cases : In a case of about the year 1200, 2 the jury, if we may trust a lively and intelligent chronicler, made short work of a charter. The plaintiff claimed seisin of certain lands in right of a ward, as her inheritance ; the defendant relied on a deed of the father of the ward. The deed was read to the assise in open court. Their verdict, as it is reported, was " that they knew nothing of our chartularies or private agreements (juramento facto, dixerunt milites se nescire de cartis nostris, nee de privatis conventionibus), but that they believed that Adam and his father and grandfather, for a hundred years back, had held the manors in fee one after the other. And so we were disseised by the judgment of the court." In our earliest reports we find the use of documents merely as evidence to the jury. In 1294 (Y. B. 22 Edw. I. 450), there is a case in which a doctrine was applied which had led to a struggle a little earlier (ib. 428), viz., that although one had lost in a posses- sory assise, this was no bar to his recovering, in a writ of right. In an assise of mortdancestor, where the tenant's defence was that plaintiff's ancestor had enfeoffed him by a charter and did not die seised, the assise found this true, and gave their verdict for the tenant. The demandant, nevertheless, brought a writ of right and was upheld in it, and it was said that the de- fence must be by battle or the great assise and not by the charter : " Yet the charter may be put forward as evidence {en evidence) to the grand assise." Where a charter gave a ground of action or defence, it must regularly, as we said, be pleaded, for if admitted, it might save going to the assise ; if it were not pleaded, one would not regu- larly use it in evidence to the jury. But the jury would, perhaps, be helped by having it put in evidence ; and they could have it if they wished. In 1292 we find this stated in a note by the re- 1 The perplexities that were caused sometimes by conflicting charters (forgery even by holy men was very common) are shown by the exclamation of Henry II. when they produced charters before him on both sides : " Iste carte ejus Jem antiquitatis sunt et ab eodem rege Aedwardo emanant. Nescio quid dicam nisi ut carte ad invicem pugnent ! '" Big. PI. A. N. 239. The point of Henry's joke lay in its hint at the Norman method when opposing witnesses differed. Harv. L. Rev. v. 52. 2 Forsyth, Tr. by Jury, 129-130, citing Jocelyn de Brakelonde.
