• Standardised for common crimes under Henry II

• Increasing availability, speeding up process

• Use of seal made document official – no need for King to be present

• Available for purchase by free men

• Especially civil cases (litigation; land disputes)

• By 1180s no freeman had to attend a

baron’s court

• Returnable writs

• Accountability

• Sheriffs’ actions scrutinised by King’s justices

• Aimed at standardising Church law

• Henry II wanted clergy guilty of non-religious crimes to be tried in the King’s courts

• Religious crimes?!

• Heresy

• Blasphemy

• Immorality

• Crimes against the Church

• Led to dispute with Thomas Becket,

Archbishop of Canterbury

• Results in Thomas’ murder

• An eyre was a visit from the king’s judges

• 1166 Henry established regular visits to the counties by his judges

• To county or borough court to …

• Hear Crown pleas (murder, rape, arson etc.)

• Hear legal cases brought by a writ

• Where A decides to sue B and so buys a writ

• Investigate king’s feudal dues

• Questions on these were sent in advance

• The country was divided into groups of counties – circuits

• When a judge was travelling his circuit he was ‘on eyre’

• This began just before the Assize of Clarendon

• Part of major drive against crime 1165-6

• All sheriffs allowed to enter barons’ courts to check tithings

• King’s justices allowed to review the justice handed out in

barons’ courts

• And take action if they felt it was necessary

• No-one was to prevent sheriffs entering their lands to arrest

those accused of, or outlawed for, serious crime

• Ordeal by water to replace other ordeals

• Established juries of Presentment

• Clamped down on vagrants, travellers and ‘strangers’

• Developed the Assize of Clarendon

• Introduced harsher, more mutilatory punishments

• Increased the range of crimes that justices-in-eyre

could examine

• Including arson and forgery

• Introduced two new types of legal action concerning

land holding

• Mort d’Ancestor

• Novel Disseisin

• Major reorganisation of Forest Law

• Still separate from the rest of the legal system

• Under the King’s direct control

• Followed similar lines of earlier reforms for other parts of the

legal system

• Divided the forests into different parts

• Allocated one of 4 justices to oversee each of them

• Appointed two members of his Household for

each to oversee day-to-day running and administration