[548]. “The said assizes” were previously called, not assizes but “inquests” (recogniciones), a wider term of which the three petty assizes here named were three special applications.
[551]. See W. S. Houldsworth (History of English Law, p. 115), who cites 1397 as the date of the final abolition of Eyres.
[552]. This was in 1233: see Pollock and Maitland, I. 181.
[553]. Blackstone, Commentaries, III. 58, assigns 1176, (the assize of Northampton) as the date of their institution.
[554]. See Statute 3 and 4 William IV. c. 27 §§ 36-7. The last actual case of a Grand Assize occurred in Davies v. Loundes, in 1835 and 1838 (1 Bing. N. C. 597, and 5 Bing. N. C. 161).
[555]. The name “Assize” is sometimes a source of confusion, because of the various meanings which attach to it. (1) Originally it denoted a session or meeting of any sort. (2) It came to be specially reserved for sessions of the king’s Council. (3) It was applied to any Ordinance enacted by the king in such a session, e.g. the Assize of Clarendon or the Assize of Northampton. (4) It was extended to every institution or procedure established by such royal ordinance, but (5) more particularly applied to the institutions or procedures known as the Grand Assize, and the Petty Assizes, from which the “Justices of Assize” took their name. (6) Finally, it denotes at the present day a “session” of these Justices of Assize, thus combining something of its earliest meaning with something of its latest. In certain contexts it has other meanings still, e.g. (7) an assessment or financial burden imposed at a “session” of the king’s council or of some other authority.
[556]. See Neilson, Trial by Combat, 33–6, and authorities there cited.
[557]. Cf. supra, pp. 103-4 for the place of “combat” in legal procedure; and pp. 108-9 for Henry’s policy in discouraging it. For the later history of trial by battle, see infra, under c. 36.