Assize of Clarendon

The Assize of Clarendon was an act of Henry II of England in 1166 that began a transformation of English law and led to trial by jury in common law countries worldwide, and that established assize courts. Prior systems for deciding the winning party in a case, especially felonies, included trial by ordeal, trial by battle, or trial by compurgation (trial by oath), in which evidence, inspection, and inquiry was made under oath by laymen, knights or ordinary freemen. After the Assize of Clarendon trial by jury developed, though some historians say beginnings of the jury system predate this act. The Assize of Clarendon did not lead to this change immediately; recourse to trial by combat was not officially rescinded until 1819, though by then it had fallen out of use. The assize takes its name from Clarendon Palace, Wiltshire, the royal hunting lodge at which it was promulgated. In 1154, Henry II inherited the throne of a troubled England. In full swing were the Crusades, a military endeavour that kept noble landowners away from their castles for years at a time. Unoccupied and unclaimed land invited squatters; since there was no central recording office for real property in England at the time, and sorting out who owned what fief was entrusted to human memory, disputes arose when aristocrats returned or died thousands of miles from home. Another, even more, serious was the aftermath of The Anarchy, a disastrous civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. The two factions had hired mercenary soldiers, and when there was no one left to pay them, many resorted to robbery and other forms of violence as a profession. Crime followed the breakdown of the local authority. The quarrel between the King and the Empress created more property troubles; as communities were divided, both factions were happy to reward their supporters with the lands of the local opponents. Finally, there was the long-standing difficulty involving the Catholic Church, which culminated in the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Related concepts (6)

Henry II of England

Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189) was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. At various points in his life, he controlled England, substantial parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France (including Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou), an area that was later called the Angevin Empire. At times, Henry also held a strong influence over Scotland and the Duchy of Brittany. Henry became politically involved by the age of fourteen in the efforts of his mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, to claim the English throne, then held by a cousin, Stephen of Blois.

Trial by ordeal

Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. In medieval Europe, like trial by combat, trial by ordeal, such as cruentation, was sometimes considered a "judgement of God" (jūdicium Deī, Godes dōm): a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf.

Jury trial

A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, India, Pakistan and Malaysia) have abolished jury trials on the grounds that juries are susceptible to bias.