A History of English Assizes 1558-1714

This book is primarily an account of the most familiar and longest lived of English courts during the most critical as well as the most influential period of its history. It describes all aspects of the court's work, personnel, jurisdiction, and constitutional position, throws incidental light on the nature of local administration and government, and examines the thesis that the function of assizes was governmental - as a main channel of communication between central government and provincial authority - as well as being judicial.