[568]. See, e.g. Stubbs, preface to R. Hoveden, IV. xcviii.; Blackstone, Great Charter, xxxvi.; Medley, Engl. Const. History, 130.
[569]. Blackstone, Ibid., points out these changes in the charter of 1217: “the leaving indefinite the number of the knights and the justices of assize, the abolishing of the election of the former, and the reducing the times of taking assizes to once in every year.”
[570]. See Middle Ages, II. 464.
[571]. Cf. Coke, First Institute, 293 b.: “As the power of justices of assises by many acts of parliament and other commissions increased, so these justices itinerant by little and little vanished away.”
[572]. 13 Edward I. c. 30.
[573]. 27 Edward I. c. 3.
[574]. 13 Edward I. c. 39; see Stephen, Hist. Criminal Law, p. 106.
[575]. 2 Edward III. c. 2. Ibid., 110.
[576]. It is unnecessary to do more than notice the exceptional “commissions of trailbaston,” supposed to date from the Statute of Rageman (1276), conferring special powers for the suppression of powerful wrongdoers. These were soon superseded by the commissions of oyer and terminer.
[577]. Mr. W. S. Holdsworth, Hist. Eng. Law, 116–123, gives an admirable and concise account of the justices and their commissions. For fuller information see Stephen, Hist. Criminal Law, I. 97-111.