The Angevin Legal Reforms
By royal command, men who had committed homicide, theft, and the like were traced in the various provinces, arrested, and brought before judges and royal officers at Bury St Edmunds and put in jail, where to avoid their liberation by some ruse, their names were entered on three lists by the command of the judges. Amongst them was one Robert, nicknamed the putrid, a shoemaker from Banham, who was certain he saw and heard himself put on the list.
Robert either was under a misconception or his name was miraculously removed from the list, but the incident shows the individual impact of legal reforms. Royal legislation, referred to as assizes, was issued at Clarendon in 1166 and Northampton in 1176 in an effort to clamp down on serious offenders. Royal justices were to travel throughout the realm, and:
Inquiry shall be made throughout every county and every hundred, through twelve of the more lawful men of the hundred and through four of the more lawful men of each village upon oath ... whether there be ... any man accused or notoriously suspect of being a robber or murderer or thief.
'All accused by the presenting juries were to be put to ordeal of water...'
These bodies of twelve are referred to as 'juries of presentment', and are the ancestors of the Grand Jury which survives in the U.S. legal system. Their accusations did not replace but rather supplemented the traditional form of prosecution where the victim, or a relative in cases of homicide, had to bring an individual accusation against the suspect. It seems that Henry regarded the traditional methods as insufficient, and hence introduced the general practice of presentment to the travelling justices. All accused by the presenting juries were to be put to ordeal of water, a test whereby those who floated were regarded as guilty, since they were rejected by the water which had been blessed by a priest. Any convicted were to lose a foot and, from 1176, their right hand. Even if acquitted by ordeal, those of particularly ill-repute were to leave the realm, under oath never to return.
Changes were also introduced to land law. Swift methods were employed to deal with a variety of cases, for example concerning recent dispossession of land ('the assize of novel disseisin') and disputed inheritance ('the assize of mort d'ancestor - death of an ancestor). These involved a royal writ (a letter) being sent to the sheriff, ordering him to assemble twelve men who would declare, for example, whether the plaintiff really had been recently dispossessed 'unjustly and without judgment'. In their speed and focus on a specific, limited issue, such procedures differed from the traditional approach, which dealt with the general and often more difficult issue as to who had the 'greater right' to the land. This question could still be raised, and Henry offered sitting tenants trial by jury as an alternative to defending their case by fighting a duel, but the speed of the new procedures concerning possession rapidly made them popular.
Published: 2001-05-01
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