258 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. (1181) and the Assise of the Forest (1184). Item justitiae . . . faciant fieri recognitionem de dissaisinis factis super assisam, etc. Haec est assisa . . . de foresta, etc. 1 On the other hand, the use of it in the sense of a particular remedy, or form of action, or mode of proceeding, and also in the sense of the tribunal, the recognitors, is sufficiently illustrated if we recall the Magna Assisa, or the several assises of Novel Disseisin, Mortdancestor and the rest, or the common expressions, cadit assisa in juratam and the like. (3.) These ordinances of Henry II. (or, perhaps, as it has been conjectured, only a single ordinance applicable to a variety of cases,) are not preserved; but the character of them as acts of royal legislation sufficiently appears in the ordinances already named, 8 as well as in Glanville 4 and elsewhere. Of the proceed- ings under them, also called assises and recognitions, Reeves (Finl. ed., i. 223-232), following Glanville, or rather paraphras- ing him with comment, mentions eight. Of these only two, those of mortdancestor and novel disseisin, went on under original writs. That these proceedings originated with Henry II. is neatly indi- cated by a charter of King John, granted in 1202, to the church of Beverly, and recited in a later Inspeximus, confirming the rights of that church as against any assisas vel recognitiones vel con- stitutiones postea factas; so far as recognitions or assises are necessary as touching what belongs to the praepositus of Beverly, they are to be held in his court, where such matters were pleaded tempore regis Henrici patris nostri, vel tempore Henrici Regis avi patris nostri^ anteqnam recognitiones vel assisae in regno nostro essent constitutae. b The assises or recognitions, i. e., the inquisi- tions provided for by royal ordinance, compulsory and obtain- able as of right, existed, as was said before, only in a limited number of cases. But the old method of obtaining this mode of relief by special permission in other cases, still held ; and it was had by consent. Having regard to the powerful favor of the crown, and to the experience of the advantages of this national mode of determining questions of fact, as compared with the duel and the old one-sided formal proof, one might easily guess 1 Ass. Forest. See also Brunner, Schw. 302. 2 Reeves, Hist. Com. Law (Finl. ed.;, 139, 185, 187 and note, 223. 8 Stubbs, Charters (6th ed.), 135, 140, 150, 156.
- ii. c. 7, and C. 19, and xiii. CI.
8 Houard, Anc. Loix, ii, 287-8; cited by Brunner, Schw. 301.
