I.: The Curia Regis and the travelling Justices.

From an early date, certainly from the accession of Henry I., it was the Crown’s practice to supplement the labours of its officials at the royal exchequer by the occasional despatch of chosen individuals to inspect the provinces, collecting information and revenue, and, incidentally, hearing lawsuits. Justice was thus dispensed in the King’s name by his delegates in every shire of England, and a distinction arose between two types of royal courts: (1) the King’s Council and its offshoots (including the three courts of common law and the court of chancery), which at first followed the King’s person, but gradually, as already shown, found a settled home at Westminster; and (2) the courts of the itinerant justices which exercised such delegated authority as the Crown chose from time to time to entrust to them. The sphere of labour of these commissioners, as they passed from district to district, was the court of each shire, convened to meet them. They formed, in this way, a link between the old local popular courts and the system of royal justice. These travelling justices were of two types, Justices in Eyre and Justices of Assize respectively.

(a) The Justices in Eyre were the earliest form of travelling judges, though their original duties were rather financial and administrative, than strictly judicial. Their history extends from Henry I. to the end of the fourteenth century. Their outstanding characteristics were the sweeping nature of their commissions (ad omnia placita), the harsh and drastic way in which they used their authority, and their intense unpopularity. Their advent was dreaded like a pestilence: each district visited was left impoverished by fines and penalties. On one occasion, the men of Cornwall “from fear of their coming, fled to the woods.” An eyre was only resorted to at long intervals—seven years came to be the recognized term—and was a method of punishing delinquencies and miscarriages of justice and of collecting royal dues. It was not a visit from these hated Justices of Eyre that the barons in 1215 desired to have four times a year.

(b) The Justices of Assize also were travelling judges, but in their original form at least, possessed hardly another feature in common with the Justices in Eyre. Their history extends from a period not earlier than the reign of Henry II. down to the present day. They seem to have been popular from the first, as they used a speedy and rational procedure; while the scope of their jurisdiction, although extended as their popularity increased, was limited by the terms of their commissions. They were regarded, not as royal tax–gatherers armed with harsh powers of coercion, but as welcome bearers of justice to the doors of those who needed it.

At first their duties were confined to enquiries of the kind mentioned in the text, known as “assizes”; and the new species of travelling judges were hence called “Justices of Assize,” a name that has clung to them for centuries, although their jurisdiction has been gradually increased till it now includes both civil and criminal pleas of every description, and although meanwhile the invention of new forms of process has superseded the old “assizes,” and at last necessitated their total abolition. They are still “justices of assize” in an age which knows nothing of the old assizes.