Publisher's Synopsis
The period from 1294 to 1350 witnessed the final phase of the Angevin administrative advances in England, and was crucial in determining the shape and principal features of England's new judicial system. This study challenges the received orthodoxy on judicial development in the first half of the 14th century. It concentrates on the personnel of local justice and the wider administrative context to build up a composite picture of attitudes to public order and law enforcement through a systematic examination of the surviving legal records.;The book offers a detailed reappraisal of the evolution of the justices of the peace, discusses the growth of professional assize circuits and the emergence of a close relationship between peace sessions and the assizes, and outlines the legal and administrative duties undertaken in the counties by local justices.;Dr Musson argues that changes in the structure and scope of royal justice not only contributed to the efficiency of judicial administration, but had a profound effect on the conduct of trials and on judicial procedure itself. He examines the character of litigation, the processes underlying methods of prosecution, and the behaviour of juries, and re-evaluates purely statistical approaches to analysis of the legal records. The specific advances in the administration of justice and in trial procedure are considered within the wider political context, and the book also discusses the effects of legal change on local society, and questions the sensationalist picture of gangs of criminal gentry.
