The writ of Quo Warranto [by what right] is created, by which all landholders exercising jurisdictions must bring their ancestors' charters before a traveling justice for the Common Pleas for examination and interpretation as to whether they were going beyond their charters and infringing upon the jurisdiction of the Royal Court. As a result, many manor courts were confined to manorial matters and could no longer view frankpledge or hear criminal cases, which were reserved for the royal courts. In the manor courts which retained criminal jurisdiction, there was a reassertion of the obligation to have present a royal coroner, whose duty it was to see that royal rights were not infringed and that the goods of felons were given to the Crown and not kept by the lords.
The supreme court was the king and his council in Parliament. It heard the most important causes, important because they concern the king, or because they concern very great men (e.g.treason), or because they involve grave questions of public law, or because they are unprecedented. It has large, indefinite powers and provides new remedies for new wrongs. The office of great justiciar disappears and the chancellor becomes the head of the council. After the council were the royal courts of the King's Bench, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer, which had become separate, each with its own justices and records. The Court of Common Pleas had its own Chief Justice and usually met at Westminster. This disadvantaged the small farmer, who would have to travel to Westminster to present a case. The King's Council maintained a close connection with the Court of the King's Bench, which heard criminal cases and appeals from the Court of Common Pleas. It traveled with the King. There were many trespass cases so heard by it in the reign of Edward I. The King's Council did a great deal of justice, for the more part criminal justice. It was supported by the populace because it dealt promptly and summarily with rebellion or some scandalous acquittal of a notorious criminal by bribed or partial jurors, and thereby prevented anarchy. Its procedure was to send for the accused and compel him to answer upon oath written interrogatories. Affidavits were then sworn upon both sides. With written depositions before them, the Lords of the council, without any jury, acquit or convict. Fines and imprisonments were meted out to rioters, conspirators, bribers, and perjured jurors. No loss of life or limb occurred because there had been no jury.
In criminal cases, witnesses acquainted with particular facts were added to the general assize of twelve men from each hundred and four men from each town. The assize then bifurcated into the grand jury of twelve to twenty-four men and the petty jury or jury of verdict of twelve men, which replaced ordeal, compurgation, and trial by combat as the method of finding the truth. The men of the petty jury as well as those of the grand jury were expected to know or to acquaint themselves with the facts of the cases. The men of the petty jury tended to be the same men who were on the grand jury.
Felony included such crimes as homicide, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, and larceny. Murder still meant secret homicide. Burglary was an offense committed in times of peace and consisted of breaking into churches, houses, and into the walls and gates of villages and boroughs. These six offenses could be prosecuted by indictment or private accusation by an individual. The penalties involved loss of life or limb or outlawry; a felon's goods were confiscated by the crown and his land was forfeited to the crown for a year and a day, after which it escheated to the felon's lord. The peace of the king now did not die with the king, but renewed automatically without an interval before the inauguration of a new king.
Notorious felons who would not consent or put themselves on inquests for felonies with which they were charged at royal courts were put in strong and hard imprisonment to persuade them to accept trial by assize. This inducement progressed into being loaded with heavy chains and placed on the ground in the worst part of the prison and being fed a only little water one day and a little bread the next. Sometimes pieces of iron or stones were placed one another onto their prone bodies to persuade them to plead. This then developed into being loaded with as much iron as could be borne, and finally into being pressed to death ["peine forte et dure">[. Many of these men chose to die by this pressing so that their families could inherit their property, which would have been forfeited if they had been convicted of serious crimes.
The most common cases in the Court of Common Pleas were "detinue" [wrongful detention of a good or chattel which had been loaned, rented, or left for safe-keeping with a "bailee", but belonged to the plaintiff], "debt" [for money due from a sale, for money loaned, for rent upon a lease for years, from a surety, promised in a sealed document, or due to arbitrators to whom a dispute had been submitted] and "account" [e.g. against bailiffs of manors, a guardian in socage, and partners]. It also heard estovers of wood, profit by gathering nuts, acorns, and other fruits in wood, corody [allowance of food], yearly delivery of grain, toll, tunnage, passage, keeping of parks, woods, forests, chases, warrens, gates, and other bailiwicks, and offices in fee.
The itinerant justices gradually ceased to perform administrative duties on their journeys because landed society had objected to their intrusiveness. Edward I substituted regular visitations of justices of assize for the irregular journeys of the itinerant justices. Each one of four circuits had two justices of assize. From about 1299, these justices of assize heard cases of gaol delivery. Their jurisdiction expanded to include serious criminal cases and breach of the king's peace.
Breaches of the forest charter laws were determined by justices of the King's forest, parks, and chases, along with men of assize.
Coroners' inquest procedures were delineated by statute and included describing in detail in the coroner's rolls every wound of a dead body, how many may be culpable, and people claiming to have found treasure who might be suspects.
The precedent for punishment for treason was established by the conviction of a knight, David ab Gruffydd, who had turned traitor to the Welsh enemy, after fighting with Edward and being rewarded with land, during the conquest of Wales. He had plotted to kill the King. He was found guilty of treason by Parliament and condemned to be dragged at the heels of horses for being a traitor to his knightly vows, hanged by the neck for his murders, cut down before consciousness left him to have his entrails cut out for committing his crimes during the holy week of Easter, and his head cut off and his body divided into four parts for plotting against the King's life. The head was placed on the Tower of London and his body sections were placed in public view at various other locations in England. This came to be known as "hanging, drawing, and quartering". Prior to this the penalty had been imprisonment, usually followed by ransom.