Also removable to the Royal Court from the county courts were issues of a lord's claim to a person as his villein (combat not available), service or relief due to a lord, dower rights, a creditor's refusal to restore a gage [something given as security] to a debtor who offered payment or a deposit, money due to a lender, a seller, or a person to whom one had an obligation under a charter, fish or harvest or cattle taken from lands unjustly occupied, cattle taken from pasture, rights to enjoy a common, to stop troubling someone's transport, to make restitution of land wrongfully occupied, to make a lord's bailiff account to him for the profits of the manor.
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, using the agencies of the county and hundred courts. To detect crimes, he required royal justices to routinely ask selected representatives: knights or other landholders, of every neighborhood if any person were suspected of any murder, robbery, theft, 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 the four best men of 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 Henry's 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 in the Royal Courts, which was abolished by Henry. If determined guilty, he forfeited his chattels to the king and his land reverted to his landlord.
If a man failed at the ordeal, the penalty prescribed by the assize of Clarendon of 1166 was loss of a foot and abjuring the realm. The assize of Northhampton of 1176 added loss of the right hand. A man who had a bad reputation had to abjure the realm even if he had successfully undergone the ordeal.
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, trial by combat was held, unless the accuser was over the age of sixty or maimed, in which case the accused went to the ordeal.
The ordeal was abolished by the Lateran Council of 1215.
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 eyewitnesses), 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. All murders were now punished alike because the applicability of the murdrum couldn't be determined since it was impossible to prove that the slain man had been English.
Trespass was a serious and forcible breach of the peace onto land that developed from the criminal law of felony. One found guilty of it could be fined and imprisoned as well as amerced.
Housebreaking, harboring outlaws, and interference with the royal perquisites of shipwreck and the beasts of the sea which were stranded on the coast [such as whales and sturgeon] were also punishable in the Royal Court.
The Royal Court had grown substantially and was not always presided over by the King. To avoid court agents from having too much discretionary power, there was a systematic procedure for bringing cases to the Royal Court. First, a plaintiff had to apply to the King's Chancery for a standardized writ into which the cause had to fit. The plaintiff had to pay a fee and provide a surety that the plea was brought in good faith. The progress of the suit was controlled at crucial points by precisely formulated writs to the sheriff, instructing him for instance, to put the disputed property under royal protection pending a decision, to impanel an assize and have it view the property in advance of the justices' arrival, to ascertain a point of fact material to the plea, or to summon a 'warrantor' to support a claim by the defendant.