Until 1971, the Courts of Assize – or Assizes – were held around England and Wales to try the most serious offences, such as homicide, infanticide, highway robbery, rape and grand larceny (the theft of items over the value of 12d, a crime that was once a capital offence). They also dealt with civil disputes over land or money.

The Assizes were presided over by visiting judges – the Justices of Assize – appointed by the King’s Bench to travel on ‘circuits’ through groups of counties. Each county would have an assize, most commonly in the main county town. There were six circuits – the Home, Norfolk and South- Eastern; Midland; Northern and North-Eastern; Oxford; Welsh including Chester; and the Western Circuit. The Home area covered Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex; the Western circuit covered Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire, together with the cities and towns of Bristol, Exeter, Poole and Southampton. Pairs of judges would work their way round the circuits to try prisoners and hear and determine cases. Assizes were usually held twice a year, with each circuit could last between a fortnight and a month, depending on how many cases there were to be heard.

Some areas of the country were not part of the assize system: Lancashire, Durham and Cheshire were separate originally; the Palatinate of Chester came under the system in 1830; but Durham and Lancaster didn’t until the 1870s. London was also slightly different: it was not historically part of the Assize system until 1834, when the Central Criminal Court – formerly the Old Bailey – became the equivalent of an assize court not just for London but also for part of the surrounding counties of Essex, Kent and Surrey.

Prisoners brought to trial at the Assizes had already been through a long-established criminal justice process. Although some men might be indicted for a crime on a coroner’s inquisition – at an inquest – many others, on being suspected of a crime, would be brought before magistrates where they would be examined.

For example, in January 1851, six men were charged with murdering a gamekeeper at Elveden in Suffolk. They were initially brought before four magistrates at the Station House in nearby Mildenhall. Depositions – witness statements – had already been taken, and were read by the magistrates. Others were called, including a surgeon, police officer, and the wife of one of the accused, as well as some of the men’s neighbours. The prisoners were allowed to question the witnesses before the magistrates deliberated. They then announced that three men would be discharged, but the other three committed for trial at the next Assizes. (Bury and Norwich Post and Suffolk Herald, 8 January 1851)

The process had its problems, and labouring, uneducated men could be at a disadvantage. One of the men committed for the murder above was asked to question witnesses, but was seen to hesitate: he “did not appear to understand how he was to act. He said he had never been up for anything before, and he did not know what to ask”. There are also problems for genealogists looking at assize records, such as indictments, for personal information; as historian JS Cockburn established, many indictments have been found where the defendant’s occupation or abode is “entirely fallacious” – perhaps because officials were filling in details quickly to meet the minimal requirements of the system. The National Archives also warns that the use of aliases or false details can make the material unreliable. But where details can be corroborated, the records of this now extinct court can make distant ancestors come back to life.