Itinerant justices could conduct these assizes: petty and grand. In 1198, the hundred is empowered to act on all the business of the session, including all recognitions and petty assizes ordered by the king's writ, where the property in dispute was worth no more than 200s. [ten pounds] a year. The four knights came to be selected by the suitors of the county court rather than by the sheriff.
This assize procedure extended in time to all other types of civil actions.
Removable to the Royal Court from the county courts were issues of a lord's claim to a person as his villein, 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. As of 1187, pleas concerning amounts of money less than 40s. were not heard by the Royal Court.
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 itinerant royal justices to form juries of presentment {indictment] composed of usually 12 knights or other landholders of every neighborhood and 4 respectable men of each township and ask them if any person were suspected of any murder, robbery, theft, etc. (These later evolved into grand juries). These assizes were an ancient institution in many parts of the country. 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 directly to the ordeal. Henry abolished trial by compurgation in the Royal Courts. If determined guilty, the offender forfeited his chattels to the king and his land reverted to his landlord. 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. Often, a man who had a bad reputation had to abjure the realm even if he had successfully undergone the ordeal. The most serious 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. Murders were now punished alike because the applicability of the murdrum fine couldn't be determined since it was impossible to prove that the slain man had been English since he would have been mutilated to hide his nationality.
Women did not serve on juries. Having the jury of presentment precluded free men from being sent to the ordeal by compurgation oaths of the villeins. As of 1194, this jury of presentment procedure applied not only to criminal cases, but also to civil, and fiscal cases.
As before, a person could also be brought to trial by the accusation of the person wronged by a felony ["appeal">[. 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 procedure of Henry II's assizes was extended from case to case as men lost faith in the older types of proof. The ordeal fell into disuse when the church prohibited blessing of ordeals in its Lateran Council of 1215.
Henry introduced the petty or trial jury of 12 reputable men to provide a workable alternative to the ordeal, compurgation, and combat. These jurors were expected to know or to find out the facts that could lead to a decision. Gradually, witnesses had to be brought in to tesify to facts the jurors didn't know.
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.