At common law courts took action against a person who was shown to have made a statement, material in the proceedings, which he knew to be false or did not believe to be true. The offence committed by him is known as perjury.
Dealing with the history of the offence, Sanford H. Kadish in ‘Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice” (Vol. 3) observed :
"History of the offence
Before witnesses had any formal role in trials, there was no need for a perjury law. In the Middle Age, when the English common law was developing, trial by battle was used to test a sworn accusation. Similarly, for the sworn denial of a serious charge based on mere suspicion, an ordeal administered by a priest was the predominant mode of trial until it was abolished in 1215 as superstitious. Finally, at least until the Assize of Clarendon (1166), less serious accusations could be successfully answered by "compurgation", that is, by obtaining a sufficient number of "oath helpers" to support the defendant's credibility, Trials in the modern sense began to develop only in the thirteenth century. Little is reliably known about the conduct of jury trials prior to the sixteenth century, but in civil cases, it seems that genuine witnesses were permitted to give their accounts, although they could not be compelled to appear. In early criminal cases, the jury seems always to have included some who, aware of the commission of a crime in their community brought the suspect before a judge. Those witnesses who did attend these early trials were perceived as part of the jury arid retired with them to deliberate, often to make their disclosures in secret. It was the verdict, not the testimony, that was perceived as either true or false; the only remedy for falsehood remotely akin to a perjury prosecution was a seldom-invoked procedure called "the writ of attaint," created in 1202 and not abolished formally until 1825. Though attaint, the jury would be punished for a 'false' verdict and the verdict itself overturned.
Witness first testified under oath in criminal cases on behalf of the Crown in the sixteenth century. No witnesses for the defense were permitted until the mid-seventeenth century, since .they would have been witnesses against the Crown, and not until 1702 were defense witnesses permitted to be sworn (I Anne, St. 2, c:9, s:3 (1 70 1) (England) (repealed)). By the late seventeenth century the jury had lost all its testimonial functions, and witnesses thus became the sole means of bringing facts to the judge's and jury's attention:
Since the early common law had no established mechanism for dealing with false swearing by witnesses, the Court of Start Chamber assumed for itself the power to punish perjury. This authority was confirmed by statute in 1487 (Star Chamber Act, 3 Hen. 5, c. I (1487) (England) (repealed). The first detailed statute against false swearing was enacted in 1562 (5 Eliz. I, C: 9 (1562) (England) (Repealed)). When the Star Chamber was abolished in 1640, its judicially defined offense of perjury passed into English common law, reaching any cases of false testimony not covered by the terms of the statute.
Edward Coke, whose views strongly influenced early American law, wrote in his Third Institute, published in 1641, that perjury was committed when, after a 'lawful oath' was administered in a 'judicial proceeding', a person swore 'absolutely and falsely' concerned a point 'material' to the issue in question (*164). In this form, the law remained unchanged into the twentieth century."