Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
The Royal Court also decided disputes regarding baronies,
nuisance or encroachments on royal land or public ways or public
waterways, such as diverting waters from their right course and issues
of nuisance by the making or destroying of a ditch or the destruction
of a pond by a mill to the injury of a person's freehold. Other pleas
of the Crown were: insult to the royal dignity, treason, breaches of
safe-conducts, and injury to the King's servants.
Henry involved the Royal Court in many criminal issues, using
the agencies of the county and hundred courts. To detect crimes, he
required itinerant royal justices to form juries of presentment
{indictment] composed of usually 12 knights or other landholders of
every neighborhood and 4 respectable men of each township and ask them
if any person were suspected of any murder, robbery, theft, etc. (These
later evolved into grand juries). These assizes were an ancient
institution in many parts of the country. What Henry's assize did was
to insist upon the adoption of a standard procedure everywhere
systematically. The procedure was made more regular instead of
depending on crime waves. If indicted, the suspected persons were then
sent directly to the ordeal. Henry abolished trial by compurgation in
the Royal Courts. If determined guilty, the offender forfeited his
chattels to the king and his land reverted to his landlord. The penalty
prescribed by the assize of Clarendon of 1166 was loss of a foot and
abjuring the realm. The assize of Northhampton of 1176 added loss of
the right hand. Often, a man who had a bad reputation had to abjure the
realm even if he had successfully undergone the ordeal. The most
serious criminal matters such as killing the king or sedition or
betraying the nation or the army, fraudulent concealment of treasure
trove [finding a hoard of coins which had been buried when danger
approached], breach of the King's peace, homicide, murder (homicide for
which there were no eyewitnesses), burning (a town, house, men, animals
or other chattel for hatred or revenge), robbery, rape and falsifying
(e.g. false charters or false measures or false money) were punishable
by death or loss of limb. Murders were now punished alike because the
applicability of the murdrum fine couldn't be determined since it was
impossible to prove that the slain man had been English since he would
have been mutilated to hide his nationality.
Women did not serve on juries. Having the jury of presentment precluded
free men from being sent to the ordeal by compurgation oaths of the
villeins. As of 1194, this jury of presentment procedure applied not
only to criminal cases, but also to civil, and fiscal cases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account