Hello
I am hoping that this is the right place to post this. My apologies if this is not correct
I am hoping that there is someone on the forum who can answer the following about Grand Jury's in the 1800 - 1900s.
I am in the process of researching different aspects of my family history. As part of that I have established a link between my family and the trial of a famous female Margaret Catchpole (from Suffolk).
This link relates to the fact that my ancestor is one of the Juror's listed at her grand jury trial.
The difficulty I am having is that I don't understand how this Grand Jury works. My understanding had been that in Historic England the Grand Jury there would have been 24 justice of peace members. However when the jury list in the History of Margaret Catchpole is reviewed there are two sets of Jury Members
For the Country - 22 Jury Members
For the Liberty - 20 Jury Members
Which I am finding very confusing now and I cannot find any reference to this on line.
I have spent a great deal of time now trying to work out how this would have fit together in the trial (It is more that I simply want to know than anything else). Part of this would be my lack of knowledge of the Grand Jury topic, although I can find a great deal on the internet about Grand Jury's from that era I cannot however find anything about the above. Unfortunately due to COVID I cannot go to the Library either currently.
Is there anyone on the Forum who would understand this?
?
I would greatly appreciate knowing the answer
Thank You
p.s.
On a quite random note relating to that particular Jury it seams quite inappropriate that the victim of the crime that Margaret Catchpole was being tried for is also appears to be a jury member. Further to that there are distinct links between the victim and a large amount of other jury members as well. I definitely would not want to be in court on those circumstances.