Apparently we have the words whereby this was accomplished, though the practice of the courts soon left those words behind it. "Then to all seeming, the council held at Northampton in 1176, instituted a second possessory assize, the assize of mort d'ancestor (assia de morte ante-cessoris). The most famous words of Magna Charta will enshrine the formula of the novel disseisin." It is a principle that in course of time can be made good even against kings. The ownership of land may be a matter for the feudal courts the King himself will protect by royal writ and inquest of neighbors every seisin of a free tenement. Hereafter, in connection with property law we may speak of the private side of this new remedy and of its relation to the actio spolii of the canon law here we have but to notice the great principle of public law that the King has laid down. (2) The seisin of a free tenement, no matter of what lord it be holden, is protected by the kind. (1) Possession or seisin, as something quite distinct from ownership or best right, is to be protected by an unusually rapid remedy. We may state the matter in two other ways: by the one we may show what is being done for our private, by the other what is being done for our public law. It was this: If one person be disseised, that is, dispossessed, of his free tenement unjustly and without a judgment, he is to have a remedy by royal writ a jury to be empanelled in the presence of the King's justices, it is to answer this simple question about seisin and disseisin if it gives the plaintiff a verdict he is to be restored to his possession. "Of this ordinance, which was in the long run to prove itself one of the most important laws ever issued in England - we have not the words - Bracton tells us that wakeful nights were spent over it, and we may well believe him, for the principle that was to be enforced was a revolutionary one. We fix this date as that of the assize of novel disseisin because the next pipe roll, a roll which records the abundant profits reaped by the itinerant justices in the field of criminal law, gives us also our first tidings of men being amerced for disseisin against the King's assize from that moment onwards we get such tidings year by year. At that council was published the edict known as the Assize of Clarendon, which deals with criminal matters and which served as instructions for the justices who were being sent out on a great eyre throughout the land. Ordinance and procedure alike were known as the assize of novel disseisin (assia novae disseisinae). He issued an ordinance and instituted a procedure. "Some two years later, perhaps at the council held at Clarendon in the first months of 1166, Henry took a far more important step. Only in these four instances does the writ which is the first step in the procedure, 'the original writ,' direct the empanelling of an inquest."ฤก Vol. It is probable that for a short time a few other cases were met in a similar fashion but in a little time we have these four and only these four petty assizes. These four cases are the subject-matter of the four petty assizes, (1) the assize utrum, (2) the novel disseisin, (3) the mort d' ancestor, (4) the darrein presentment. In four other cases a plaintiff may begin proceedings by obtaining a royal writ, which will direct that an inquest shall be sworn to answer a particular question formulated in the writ. In a proprietary action for land or for advowson, the 'tenant' the passive party, may, rejecting battle, 'put himself upon the grand assize of our lord the king,' and an inquest will then be called in to declare who has the better right. "Thus the sworn inquest begins to make its way into our ordinary civil procedure. The development of these assizes is described in the following extracts from Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law 1: The lesser assizes were four possessory actions in which the assize, or trial by jury, was permitted.
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