| Did you ever serve on a jury? You took your seat in a | | | | on the first bone of your right forefinger. The left hand |
| panel of twelve jurors solemnly sequestered behind a | | | | keeps the active tally (e.g. measures of peas, apples, |
| soundproof door. Then came a surprise. Seven jurors | | | | sausages, onions, turnips or livestock) while the right |
| reached the verdict. The others went with the majority. | | | | hand keeps track of the twelves to subtotal the |
| That was my experience. So why empanel twelve | | | | "bottom line." Twelve was the benchmark for |
| people to do the work of seven? | | | | commerce. |
| Blame King Henry II of England. Henry won the throne | | | | And the benchmark for juries! What was good for |
| of England in 1154 after nineteen years of civil war left | | | | trade was good for King Henry's justice. Henry |
| the country in ruins. He spent his first decade as king | | | | achieved his reforms at a time of vicious discord with |
| restoring what years of strife had destroyed, including | | | | Thomas Becket, and with Eleanor, Henry's queen. |
| the judicial system. A man of tireless energy, Henry | | | | Eleanor removed herself from Henry's court in England |
| worked with his chancellor, Thomas Becket, to create | | | | to protest his flouting his mistress, "Fair" Rosamond |
| a code of laws and penalties to be interpreted in new | | | | Clifford. |
| county courts by incorruptible officers. Judicial systems | | | | We can imagine Eleanor saying, "Let Henry draft his |
| in many English-speaking countries descend from the | | | | Constitutions, his Assize! Let him prefer his twelve just |
| model that Henry wrote into law at Clarendon in 1166. | | | | men! Let him judge England!" |
| But why empanel exactly "twelve just men" to "report | | | | Fired by her own passion for reform, Eleanor set up |
| malefactors"? Henry's queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, | | | | her Court of Ladies in her capital city, Poitiers, where |
| explains: "Henry showed populist leanings in curious | | | | women debated "courtly love" and addressed their |
| ways. He set his legalists striving to codify the | | | | rights, devising Eleanor's Code of Poitiers. "I imagined |
| common law, and twelve is the common measure in | | | | for women a state above strife and far above men. |
| the market-place." | | | | Would that our human estates were ruled by twelve |
| Indeed, twelve was the common market measure. Not | | | | just women!" |
| ten. Counting ten fingers takes you to ten, and you | | | | The supremacy of base-twelve in trade dates from |
| can't measure quarters and thirds in whole numbers. | | | | before the reign of Charlemagne, who died in 814. |
| But twelve, a dozen (douzaine), takes you to a gross, | | | | Charlemagne never ruled England, but good ideas |
| 144, while whole numbers (multiples of three and four) | | | | travel. Henry II adopted base-twelve for English money |
| express quarters and thirds. | | | | as well as commerce. For nearly eight hundred years |
| Try it! Use your left thumb to tally the number of bones | | | | a shilling was worth twelve pence. |
| in the other four fingers of that hand. You'll count | | | | So! Measures of peas, grain, sausages, livestock, |
| twelve. Now transfer your left hand's score, twelve, | | | | pennies and jurors. All over the planet, jurors still file in |
| into "Memory" by using your right thumb to tally twelve | | | | and out of courts, in twelves. |