When the ordeals were forbidden, England thus had a working system of evaluating evidence capable of replacing them. By 1220 a system of juries (petty juries, distinct from grand juries) was enforced for final verdicts in cases in which guilt was neither manifest nor only lightly suspected.72 Since the evaluation of the evidence was still effectively free, however, there was little call for rules concerning it, so English law has not contributed as much to the discussion of probability as has Continental law. Another effect was that English law never accepted torture to obtain evidence.
