Horse 1023 - Twelve Men Good and True

Thomas Randolph in his poem The muses looking-glasse; and Amyntas circa 1635 wrote:
"I had rather... haue his twelve Godvathers, good men and true, contemne him to the Gallowes."

The twelve Godfathers, good men and true is referring to none other than that of a jury; a panel of twelve people selected from society to judge the fate and evidence placed before them, of some other member of society accused of some serious crime.

Legend has it that the first ever jury, was formed in the city of Chester in north-west England in 946AD, though one must wonder at both the validity of the story and of the sense of it.

The wife of the Governor of Hawarden (a village 5 miles west of Chester and who's most famous son was PM William Gladstone), was praying in the local church for a break in a drought which was causing crops to fail, resulting in famine. Apparantly, a thunderstorm broke out and a statue of the Virgin Mary fell on top of her, killing her instantly.

A court was called and twelve good men and true, found the statue guilty of murder and condemned the statue to be hanged.
Because it was a statue of the Virgin Mary it was then decided that God should decide its fate, so the statue was thrown into the River Dee until it was "drowned".

The people of Chester, some 5 miles down the River Dee who found the statue and pronounced it quite dead, then buried the statue. It is belived to have been buried under what is now called the Roodee, or the stump of presumably what once was a sandstone cross marking its grave.

Now I don't know about the sense about finding a statue guilty of murder, but it does show that even in the dark ages people were thinking about more equitable ways of deciding the results of court proceedings. If twelve men good and true decide something, then the chances are that it must be equitable, albeit incredibly silly.