Common-law criminal procedure begins, like Roman criminal procedure, as a limitation upon the agencies of good order. At common law originally it began with presentment on neighborhood knowledge or neighborhood gossip or indictment on a case brought forward by a private prosecutor. There was trial before witness-triers from the vicinage, again on neighborhood knowledge. Presently this neighborhood knowledge came to be supplemented by evidence adduced in court, in the XVII century there came to be a rational trial on evidence adduced under growing restrictions as to what was admissible, reaching in the United States, in the nineteenth century, its highest development as a highly contentious proceeding, under strict rules of the game, conducted by unfettered advocates before a jury carefully selected so as to preclude all preconceptions as to the facts, and in the presence of a judicial umpire. While this type of criminal procedure was growing up, a rival system struggled for a foothold in sixteenth and seventeeth-century England. On the Continent an inquisitorial system of prosecution had developed, based upon the Roman law; and this for a time threatened to displace the common-law system. Examination of accused persons by a doctor of the civil law came very near becoming a normal part of English criminal procedure, and did affect it so far as to bring about a practice of preliminary examination of witnesses and taking down of their depositions. A number of circumstances stood in the way of a general taking over of the inquisitorial system. One was that in the Continental procedure interrogation of accused persons was directed not to obtaining evidence and reaching the truth, but to the obtaining of confessions to satisfy a requirement as to full proof, and to that end, on the Continent and in Scotland, it involved torture. Torture was rightly repugnant to the English, and interrogation of accused persons became identified with it as something abhorrent. Also interrogation or examination by doctors of the civil law was employed in political prosecutions and, in the contests between the common-