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 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, formerly
decided in the shire and hundred courts. To detect crimes, he
required royal officers to routinely ask selected
representatives: knights or other landholders, of every
neighborhood if any person were suspected of any murder,
robbery, etc. A traveling royal justice or a sheriff would then
hold an inquest, in which the representatives answered by oath
what people were reputed to have done certain crimes. They made
such inquiries through assizes of presentment, usually composed
of twelve men from each hundred and four men for each township.
(These later evolved into grand juries). These assizes were an
ancient institution in many parts of the country. They consisted
of representatives of the hundreds, usually knights, and
villages who testified under oath to all crimes committed in
their neighborhood, and indicted those they suspected as
responsible and those harboring them. What the 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 to the ordeal. There was no trial by compurgation,
which was abolished by Henry. If determined guilty, he forfeited
his chattels to the King and his land reverted to his landlord.
If he passed the ordeal but was ill-famed in the community, he
could be banished from the community. Later the ordeal was
abolished.
As before, a person could also be brought to trial by the
accusation of the person wronged. If the accused still denied
the charge after the accuser testified and the matter
investigated by inquiries and interrogation and then analyzed, a
duel was held, unless the accuser was over the age of sixty or
maimed, in which case the accused went to the ordeal.
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 eye-witnesses), 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. House-breaking, harboring outlaws, the royal
perquisites of shipwreck and the beasts of the sea which were
stranded on the coast were also punishable in the Royal Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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