The name “Assize” is sometimes a source of confusion, because of the various meanings which attach to it. (1) Originally it denoted a session or meeting of any sort. (2) It came to be specially reserved for sessions of the king’s Council. (3) It was applied to any Ordinance enacted by the king in such a session, _e.g._ the Assize of Clarendon or the Assize of Northampton. (4) It was extended to every institution or procedure established by such royal ordinance, but (5) more particularly applied to the institutions or procedures known as the Grand Assize, and the Petty Assizes, from which the “Justices of Assize” took their name. (6) Finally, it denotes at the present day a “session” of these Justices of Assize, thus combining something of its earliest meaning with something of its latest. In certain contexts it has other meanings still, _e.g._ (7) an assessment or financial burden imposed at a “session” of the king’s council or of some other authority. The _duellum_, introduced at the Norman Conquest, remained for a century thereafter the chief method in use among the upper classes for determining all serious pleas or litigations. Gradually, however, it was confined to two important groups of pleas, one civil and the other criminal: namely, appeals of treason and felony on the one hand, and suits to determine the title to land on the other.[556] This process of restriction was accelerated by the deliberate policy of Henry II., who attempted, indeed, to carry it much further, devising machinery which provided for the defendant or accused party, wherever possible, an option by resorting to which he could, in an ever increasing variety of circumstances, escape trial by battle altogether. Under chapter 36 will be explained the expedient adopted for evading combat in an appeal of treason or felony. The present chapter relates to the procedure devised by Henry for superseding the _duellum_ in certain important groups of civil pleas,[557] and incidentally affords proof that this part of his reforms had already become popular with the opponents of the Crown. The frequent use of the three Petty Assizes was now insisted on, although the Grand Assize was still viewed askance for reasons to be explained in connection with chapter 34. ----- Footnote 556: See Neilson, _Trial by Combat_, 33–6, and authorities there cited. Footnote 557: Cf. _supra_, pp. 103-4 for the place of “combat” in legal procedure; and pp. 108-9 for Henry’s policy in discouraging it. For the later history of trial by battle, see _infra_, under c. 36. -----