arrested William stated that the lord's wife had arranged for his arrest. In such a case, the court simply asked the indictors for more information. They related the whole story; William was acquitted by the court and the lord was committed to gaol. In this case, the court quickly detected the plot and merely needed confirmation. But what of cases where the facts were not clear, or the decision was difficult? It was these that provided the gravest difficulties with jury trials following the abolition of trial by ordeal. Upon the calling of a general Court of Eyre, it was easy to assemble a thousand or more jurors, who could be questioned, and pronounce a prisoner guilty or not. If the proceedings were instigated upon the delivery and indictment from a gaol, before a non-professional judge, most prisoners were coerced to put themselves upon the mercy of a jury trial, and forgo their ancient right to trial by ordeal. If they refused a jury trial, there was no option but to keep them in prison until they changed their mind. Under these circumstances, the jury became a new form of ordeal. The judges, in difficult cases ceased to be inquisitors, and simply came to accept the verdict of the jury. The accused was pronounced either "guilty" or "not guilty". This result soon came to be accepted with as little doubt, as much as the result of the hot iron or cold water was accepted a generation earlier. At first, there was no compulsion to deem the actions of a jury with any more rationality than that of the ordeal. The ordeal had shown God's judgment in the matter. The verdict of the jury, while not necessarily congruent with God's will, nonetheless, was inscrutable. Over the course of a generation or so after 1215, the jury system began to be rationalized and regarded as a judicial body. Bracton (circa 1250) seemed to be fairly complacent with the jury as an institution. Other contemporaneous writers were markedly dissatisfied with the jury. The Mirror of Justices contains a violent attack on the jury system from 1290. In those parts of France where the jury system took root at the same time, there were tremendous protests against it, as being oppressive. From the time of Edward I of England onward, the function of the jury was slowly being judicially defined. Questions of law were