The local administration of justice has never been one of those areas that naturally excites the historian. In its concern with structural and procedural features it can easily be regarded as arcane and insular. Giving a paper that concentrates on the assizes and gaol delivery, or more accurately that seeks to reappraise existing views on the subject, runs the obvious risk of being too esoteric for its audience or wallowing in the minutiae of a highly technical area. To view this subject in such terms, however, is to misunderstand and misrepresent its importance with regard to much wider themes, about which this volume of essays is concerned, namely the growth of royal authority and the stimulation of bureaucratic control through the production of documents. These records we now use to recreate the activities of crown officials and government institutions. The hearing of actions concerning land ownership and property rights in sessions known as the petty (or ‘possessory’) assizes and the trying of prisoners charged with felony (a serious offence against the crown) were by the thirteenth century important features of medieval life (both from the perspective of the crown and the ‘ordinary’ landed person or corporation). The significance of these judicial sessions lies in their divergence from, or emergence as supplements to, the visitations of the general eyre, the omnicompetent judicial agency that supervised local government and the administration of justice in the shires. Over the course of the thirteenth century, there evolved an increasingly complex network of officials purveying or overseeing the operation of royal justice at the local level, which centred especially on the assizes and gaol delivery.

The organisation of this system through royal commissions issued to a small band of justices is commonly referred to in modern convention as the ‘four knights’ system, the name probably arising from the administrative and judicial duties that were frequently assigned to ‘four prudent and law-worthy knights’. For example, under Magna Carta (chapter 18) four knights (in association with two royal justices) were to visit each county four times a year and take the petty assizes. Magna Carta (chapter 18) four knights (in association with two royal justices) were to visit each county four times a year and take the petty assizes.