By demanding that twelve people agree on a verdict, the courts did provide some comfort to the jurors and their consciences, and officials would keep searching for jurors until they found twelve who could agree. The system also provided some safeguards for the accused. By the seventeenth century, at least, judges were directing juries that they had to be ‘sure’ of guilt, and even that evidence of a felony had to be ‘so manifest, as it could not be contradicted’.
