Alternately, the tenant-defendant could still chose trial by duel. A duel was fought between the parties or their champions. The losing party of a duel had to pay a fine of 60s.
However, if the parties were relatives, neither the assize nor the duel was available to them, but the matter had to be decided by the law of inheritance. Nor was burgage tenure usually decided by assize.
This assize procedure extended in time to all other types of civil actions.
Also removable to the Royal Court from the shire courts were issues of a lord's claim to a person as his villein (duel 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.
A person who felt he had not had justice in the manor court could appeal to the King for a writ of right after the manor court's decision or for a writ praecipe during the manor court's proceeding.
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, formerly decided in the shire and hundred courts. To detect crimes, he required royal officers to routinely ask selected representatives: knights or other landholders, of every neighborhood if any person were suspected of any murder, robbery, 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 four men for 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 the 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, which was abolished by Henry. If determined guilty, he forfeited his chattels to the King and his land reverted to his landlord. If he passed the ordeal but was ill-famed in the community, he could be banished from the community. Later the ordeal was abolished.
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, a duel was held, unless the accuser was over the age of sixty or maimed, in which case the accused went to the ordeal.
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 eye-witnesses), 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. House-breaking, harboring outlaws, the royal perquisites of shipwreck and the beasts of the sea which were stranded on the coast 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.