I do not have any descent study the Plymouth Colony Court and depend on the Plymouth Colony Achieve Project on the internet. It seems a good site and one of the hosts has written what seems an important study of the court. Their comments on Grand Jury members is as follows: "Composed of freemen in good standing from the different townships, members of the Grand Jury were "pannelled", or selected and appointed, by the Governor and Assistants for an annual term of office, to hear charges made on oath of suspected criminal conduct by persons living in the Colony, but there had to be two witnesses " Mr. Chandler's comment that William Carpenter was a deputy and therefore elected, while accurate, still misses the point that his judicial roles were the result of appointment. Where does Mr. Chandler's knowledge of the Plymouth Court come from? BC

Bruce wrote: > Mr. Chandler's comment that William Carpenter was a deputy and therefore > elected, while accurate, still misses the point that his judicial roles > were the result of > appointment. Where does Mr. Chandler's knowledge of the Plymouth Court come > from? The real point is that jury duty, even then, was a simple duty. Being on a jury was a chore and not an honor. A person could in fact get out of jury duty, and some people now and then refused to serve, but there was a fine for such a refusal. In fairness, jurors were selected so as to spread the burden around. Note that, in those early days, the juror terms were annual, but that only meant that the sessions were normally once a year. Also, note that a person already serving as a Deputy would be on hand anyway at the session and could conveniently be a juror as well. I don't know that jurors in those days were predominantly picked from among the Deputies, but it certainly would have been sensible. These remarks are based mostly on my reading about the court system in Massachusetts, rather than Plymouth, but the two systems were very nearly the same, except that Massachusetts moved rather quickly to a system of quarterly county courts. As far as I know, Plymouth didn't have such until 1685, after amalgamation. Now, let's see -- what does this have to do with William Carpenter? Oh, yes. He was a Deputy to the General Court, and it seems that, while he was there, he was on the judicial committee. That would have kept him a bit busier than the average delegate, but it was all over after a few weeks. The Governor and the Assistants actually ran the colony the rest of the year. John Chandler