Kent assize

The twice-yearly assize for the county, part of the Crown's ordinary apparatus in Kent. It hears complaints brought by liberty corporations when a Crown hull enters their ground.

The twice-yearly assize at Maidstone, where a judge from Westminster hears the capital cases on a calendar of fifty to ninety over eleven days.

Named with it

• Clerk of Assize Henry Barming · clerk

Ties

• hears complaints from the chartered ports against Crown hulls
• hears witchcraft cases brought by the Grey Nails

At the table

A band arriving at Maidstone in assize week will find no bed. Four times in two hundred years a corporation's complaint has forced a Crown officer to acknowledge its liberty in the corporation's own hall. An assize ruling obtained by Rachel Folkestone's predecessor established that a licensed hull's cover ends the moment she touches the third register. No assize reaches a man on the Near Coast. Real decisions rest on the clerk, the county attorneys and the committing magistrates. The clerk has written down his concern at the conviction rate on cases brought by the Grey Nails; a band that helps the order will be the only non-member witness in court.