Harrowgate Assize

The whole of the realm's law in the March, sitting at Harrowgate four times a year: twice by the county justices and twice by a justice riding the northern circuit from Westminster (the Hilary sitting often fails in snow). It hears felony, debt, inheritance and above all boundary disputes, decided on bounding books and a rule of four witnesses from at least three households.

The travelling royal court that hears the march's serious cases: disputes under service articles, impersonating officials, affray, theft of bone from ruins.

Named with it

• Justice of Assize Sir Edmund Nostell
• Justice of Assize Sir Ralph Wetherby
• Justice Oliver Pickhill
• Clerk of Assize Gervase Pontefract · The Northern Sessions Book

Ties

• encourages rather than corrects the Woodmote and Mereton Reed Sessions
• never accepted jurisdiction over the Woodmote
• the Harrowgate Corporation's mayor sits beside the justice
• prisoners held at Harrowgate Gaol
• escorted by the Crown garrisons
• four musters were called for its business

At the table

It will not try whether ground is haunted or cursed, only the facts beneath, leaving such matters to the Church's courts. Its most famous sitting, the Black Thorn Assize, ran eleven days over a pact family and its roll (held at the priory) is the best document in the March. Slow—three to nine months—but honest and not hostile to outsiders; it remembers bad cases. Companies should bring documents and use it against institutions. Business takes three months at best, so the march prefers private arbitration. It hangs thieves, and once convicted a company that had stayed on as freebooters. It refused to convict for taking bone because bone is not property, and the justice criticised the law from the bench.