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5 unusual facts about assizes


Assizes

From the 1830s onwards, Wales and the palatine county of Chester, previously served by Court of Great Sessions, were merged into the circuit system.

Miles Giffard

"Despite clear evidence of schizophrenia presented at his trial at Bodmin Assizes it took the jury only 35 minutes to find him guilty and he was sentenced to death."

Nathaniel Crisp

"The Bishop" was convicted at the Spring Assizes of the following year for his riotous conduct during the ducking season, fined a nominal sum, and imprisoned for six months.

Radnorshire

New Radnor was the original county town, although the Assizes sat at Presteigne and ultimately the County Council formed in 1889 met at Presteigne as well.

Tommy Ball

The jury rejected this argument, returning a verdict of "wilful murder", and Stagg was committed for trial at Stafford Assizes.


Edmund Pelham

Sir Edmund Pelham (c.1533 – 1606), a member of the distinguished Pelham family of Laughton, was an Irish judge who held the office of Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, and was noteworthy as the first judge to hold assizes in Ulster.

Garthorpe, North Lincolnshire

After he was finally captured and sentenced at York Assizes, he was transported to Tasmania, Australia.

Giles Rooke

At the next Exeter assizes he prosecuted to conviction William Winterbotham, a dissenting minister at Plymouth, for preaching sermons of a revolutionary tendency; and on 13 November of the same year was appointed to the puisne judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas, left vacant by the death of John Wilson.

Rooke presided at the trial at the York Lent assizes in 1795 of Henry Redhead Yorke for conspiracy against the government.

Hardingstone

The felon, Alfred Rouse, was tried at Northampton Assizes and subsequently hanged in Bedford Gaol on 10 March 1931.

John de Bayeux

Nevertheless in the great assizes of 1224–5, he was again itinerant justice in Dorset, and in the same year was also justice of forests and constable of the castle of Plimpton.

John Puleston

With Francis Thorpe, he tried John Morris, governor of Pontefract Castle, at York assizes for high treason in August of the same year.

Judges' Lodgings, Monmouth

It was in use as the Judges' Lodgings for the Monmouth Assizes before 1835, and as the Militia Officers' Mess in the 1870s.

Quarter session

In 1867, the Attorney-General for Ireland, Hedges Eyre Chatterton, issued guidelines to regulate which cases ought to be tried at tried at assizes rather than quarter sessions: treason, murder, treason felony, rape, perjury, assault with intent to murder, party processions, election riots, and all offences of a political or insurrectionary character.

Shire Hall, Monmouth

It was here that the Chartist leader Henry Vincent, who had sought the right of all men to vote in parliamentary elections, was imprisoned before being tried at the assizes.


see also