1. Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), pp. 67–69. On Henry’s personal commitment to legal reform, see Paul Brand, “Henry II and the Creation of the English Common Law,” Haskins Society Journal 11 (1990): 197–222.
2. Much has been written about the role of presentment in criminal law. Major contributions include: Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 151–53, vol. 2, pp. 641–48; Naomi Hurnard, “The Jury of Presentment and the Assize of Clarendon,” English Historical Review 56 (1941): 374–410; R. E. Latham and C.A.F. Meekings, “The Veredictum of Chippenham Hundred, 1281,” in Collectanea, ed. N. J. Williams, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Records Branch, vol. 12 (Devizes, 1956): 50–128; R. C. Van Caenegem, “Public Prosecution of Crime in Twelfth-Century England,” in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney, ed. C.N.L. Brook, D. E. Luscombe, G. H. Martin, and D. M. Owen (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 41–76; C.A.F. Meekings, The 1235 Surrey Eyre, 2 vols., Surrey Record Society, vols. 31–32 (Guildford, 1979–83), vol. 1, pp. 94–116; Roger D. Groot, “The Jury of Presentment before 1215,” American Journal of Legal History 26 (1982): 1–24; Thomas A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience. Perspectives on the Criminal Trial Jury 1200–1800 (Chicago, 1985), pp. 4–13; Anthony Musson, “Twelve Good Men and True? The Character of Early Fourteenth-Century Juries,” Law and History Review 15 (1997), pp. 115–26; J. G. Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England (Toronto, 1998), pp. 19–56.
3. There were, however, a few exceptions to the rule. In manorial courts, for example, presentment was often tantamount to conviction without further process.
4. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. 1, p. 144.
5. Hurnard, “Jury of Presentment”; Patrick Wormald, “Maitland and Anglo-Saxon Law: Beyond Domesday Book,” in The History of English Law. Centenary Essays on “Pollock and Maitland,” ed. John Hudson, Proceedings of the British Academy 89 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 10–13.