Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
The Royal Court split up into several courts with different
specialties and became more like departments of state than
offices of the King's household. The judges were career civil
servants knowledgeable in the civil and canon law. The Court of
Common Pleas heard civil cases brought by one subject against
another. Pursuant to the Magna Carta, it sat only at one place,
Westminster Hall in London. Its records were the de banco rolls.
The Court of the Exchequer with its subsidiary department of the
Treasury was in almost permanent session at Westminster,
collecting the Crown's revenue and enforcing the Crown's rights.
The Court of the King's Bench (a marble slab in Westminster upon
which the throne was placed) traveled with the King and heard
criminal cases and pleas of the Crown. Its records were the
coram rege rolls. The title of the Chief Justiciar of England
changed to the Chief Justice of England.
Appeals from these courts could be made to the King and his
council.
Crown pleas included issues of the King's property, fines due to
him, murder (a body found with no witnesses to a killing),
homicide (a killing for which there were witnesses), rape,
wounding, mayhem, consorting, larceny, robbery, burglary, arson,
poaching, unjust imprisonment, selling cloth by non-standard
widths, selling wine by non-standard weights.
Royal judges called justices in eyre traveled to the shires every
seven years. There, they gave interrogatories to local assizes
of twelve men to determine what had happened there since the
last eyre. Every crime, every invasion of royal rights, and
every neglect of police duties was to be presented and tried.
The assize ultimately evolved into the jury of verdict, which
replaced ordeal, compurgation, and battle as the method of
finding the truth. Suspects were failed until their cases could
be heard and jail breaks were common.
Royal coroners held inquests on all sudden deaths to determine
whether they were accidental or not. If not, royal justices held
trial. They also had duties in treasure troves and shipwreck
cases.
The hundred court decided cases of theft, viewing of boundaries
of land, claims for tenurial services, claims for homage,
relief, and for wardship; enfeoffments made, battery and brawls
not amounting to felony, wounding and maiming of beasts,
collection of debts, trespass, detinue and covenant, defamation,
and enquiries and presentments arising from the assizes of bread
and ale and measures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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