The first instance of a grand jury can be traced back to the Assize of Clarendon, an 1166 act of Henry II of England.

Henry II also introduced what is now known as the " grand jury " through his Assize of Clarendon.

* The Assize of Clarendon is enacted in England.

The Assize of Clarendon in 1166 caused these juries to be adopted systematically throughout the country.

The English royal castles also became used as gaols – the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 insisted that royal sheriffs establish their own gaols and, in the coming years, county gaols were placed in all the shrieval royal castles.

The Assize of Clarendon was an 1166 act of Henry II of England that began the transformation of English law from such systems for deciding the prevailing party in a case as trial by ordeal or trial by battle to an evidentiary model, in which evidence and inspection was made by laymen.

The Assize of Clarendon did not lead to this change immediately, however ; recourse to trial by combat was not officially rescinded until 1819.

The Assize takes its name from Clarendon Palace, Wiltshire, the royal hunting lodge at which it was promulgated.

* Medieval Sourcebook: Text of the Assize of Clarendon

* Avalon Project, Assize of Clarendon text

* Assize of Clarendon

Henry II also instituted the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, which allowed for jury trials and reduced the number of trials by combat.

When Henry II reformed English civil procedure in the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, trial by jury became available, and lawyers, guarding the safety of the lives and limbs of their clients, steered people away from the wager of battle.

The Assize of Ultram, especially as defined in the Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164, gave the Crown a chance to clarify difficult questions of ownership and duty in a non-religious, secular court.

::* Assize of Clarendon, 1166 act taken by King Henry II of England

King Henry II instituted the custom of having judges ride around the countryside (" ride circuit ") each year to hear cases, rather than forcing everyone to bring their cases to London ( see Assize of Clarendon ).

The Assize of Northampton, largely based on the Assize of Clarendon of 1166, is among a series of measures taken by King Henry II of England that solidified the rights of the knightly tenants and made all possession of land subject to and guaranteed by royal law.

Magna Carta and the Assize of Clarendon provided for the trial of serious criminal cases on circuit.

* January – The Assize of Northampton is enacted.

In 1833 his famous Assize Sermon on " national apostasy " gave the first impulse to the Oxford Movement, also known as the Tractarian movement.

In May 1747 Hopkins was first appointed as a Justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court, whose long title was the " Superior Court of Judicature, Court Of Assize, and General Gaol Delivery.

The first mention of the name Pensans is in the Assize Roll of 1284, and the first mention of the actual church that gave Penzance its name, is from a manuscript written by William Borlase in 1750:

It was " an exceptionally early work ", designed before his first major commission, the Manchester Assize Courts.

The Assize of Northampton is also the first official document to contain information on the possessory assizes of mort d ' ancestor and novel disseisin.

In 1957, she was the first woman to sit as a Commissioner of Assize.

Water Orton was first documented in an Assize Roll of 1262 as ' Overton ' which means farm by the bank or edge.

They could try and decide many serious crimes, including treason and murder, which normally could only be heard and determined in a Court of Assize, and in view of the special powers of the liberty justices, a Judge of Assize had no power to act in the Soke of Peterborough.

In January 1938, he was asked to act as a Commissioner of Assize to open the Assize Court in Aylesbury, dealing with an average of ten cases a day.

Soon afterwards he was commissioned to act as Justice of Assize on the western circuit, becoming in 1513 judge of the Court of Common Pleas.

During the reign of Henry III the Assize of Arms of 1252 required that all " citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins and others from 15 to 60 years of age " should be armed.

Charles Moore Watson ( 1844 – 1916 ) proposes an alternate etymology: The Assize of Weights and Measures ( also known as Tractatus de Ponderibus et Mensuris ), one of the statutes of uncertain date from the reign of either Henry III or Edward I, thus before 1307, specifies " troni ponderacionem "— which the Public Record Commissioners translates as " troy weight ".

The oldest known source for the expression " baker's dozen " dates to the 13th century in one of the earliest English statutes, instituted during the reign of Henry III ( 1216 – 1272 ), called the Assize of Bread and Ale.

The centralised English customs system can be traced to the Winchester Assize of 1203-4, in the reign of King John, from which time customs were to be collected and paid to the State Treasury.

The no longer applicable right to keep and bear arms had originated in England during the reign of Henry II with the 1181 Assize of Arms, and developed as part of Common Law.

Article 35 of Magna Carta re-enacted the Assize of Cloth, and in the reign of Edward I an official called an " alnager " was appointed to enforce it.

The Assize of Arms of 1252, which required the appointment of constables to summon men to arms, quell breaches of the peace, and to deliver offenders to the sheriffs or reeves, is cited as one of the earliest creation of the English police.

::* Assize of Bread and Ale, an obsolete English statute regulating the price, weight and quality of the bread and beer

It was the difficulty in using the longbow which led various monarchs of England to issue instructions encouraging their ownership and practice, including the Assize of Arms of 1252 and King Edward III's declaration of 1363: " Whereas the people of our realm, rich and poor alike, were accustomed formerly in their games to practise archery – whence by God's help, it is well known that high honour and profit came to our realm, and no small advantage to ourselves in our warlike enterprises ... that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows ... and so learn and practise archery.

* Review of the Statutes and Ordinances of Assize which have been established in England from the 4th year of King John, 1202, to the 37th of his present Majesty ( London, 1801 ), a work of some historical research.

As an emergency measure, John recreated a version of Henry II's Assize of Arms, with each shire creating a structure to mobilise local levies.

These early charters were confirmed by several succeeding kings, Henry VI granting in addition Assize of Bread and Ale and other privileges.

::* Assize of Northampton, additional legal measures taken by Henry II of England

The laws were in part codified under the Assize of the Forest ( 1184 ) of Henry II.