by Henry VIII is summoned for jury service and discovers waiting is its own punishment
I have passed judgment on dukes, cardinals, and two wives personally. The jury summons that arrived at my flat gave me exactly one week’s notice and no say in the matter whatsoever.
The Waiting Room
I reported to the court at half past eight and was placed in a windowless room with forty other citizens, a vending machine, and a television bolted to the wall playing a programme about antiques nobody was watching. In my day, justice was swift, occasionally too swift, several historians have noted. Here, justice apparently begins with four hours of sitting on a plastic chair reading a laminated sign about fire exits.
The Selection
A clerk called names from a list, mine among them, and I was led into a courtroom and asked if I had any reason I could not serve impartially. I said I had personally overseen more trials than anyone in this building combined, several with considerably worse outcomes for the defendant, and the judge asked me to simply say yes or no. I said no. I was selected immediately, which I choose to interpret as respect for my experience rather than, as my neighbour in the jury box suggested, a shortage of available jurors that week.
The Case
The case concerned a dispute over a fence, erected six inches into a neighbour’s garden, a boundary disagreement I recognised instantly from my own dealings with France, minus the artillery. Both parties gave evidence for two full days over six inches of soil. I once redrew the border of an entire kingdom in less time than these people spent discussing a fence panel, and I did it without a single laminated exhibit folder.
Deliberation
In the deliberation room, twelve of us argued for three hours. One juror, a delivery driver named Steve, held out alone against the other eleven, insisting the fence was clearly over the line, and refused every attempt at persuasion. I admired him enormously. I have executed men with less conviction than Steve brought to a boundary dispute. Eventually he was persuaded, not by evidence, but by hunger, the same tool I once used successfully on an entire papal delegation.
The Verdict
We returned a verdict in the defendant’s favour, the judge thanked us for our service, and I was handed a travel expenses form capped at a rate that would not have covered my horse’s shoes in 1520. I told the clerk I had settled matters of state with more ceremony than this. She said I could claim for lunch if I kept the receipt. I kept the receipt. Even a king learns, eventually, to keep the receipt.
The Reckoning
Sandra from payroll later told me the jury service payment landed in my account nine days after I submitted the claim form, a turnaround I found genuinely impressive for an institution I once assumed moved at the pace of a glacier. I have decided jury duty is the closest thing this country offers to actual civic ceremony, minus the ceremony, minus most of the dignity, but with a free biscuit in the deliberation room, which frankly none of my own councils ever thought to provide.
I cover the wider theme of judgment, justice, and the art of losing your head in considerably more detail elsewhere on this site. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: Britain’s bold new justice policy explained in full, the government’s urgent review into whether prison terms contain numbers, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
