Sarrum assize

The county assize, the only royal court in Sarrum, sitting four times a year for four days and hearing perhaps two hundred cases a year prepared by the council's clerk and the halls' prosecutors.

The Crown's court for felonies in the county, sitting at Sarrum. Between 4590 and 4620 it hanged thirty-one people on indictments alleging a power, mostly laid beside ordinary charges.

Ties

• receives felonies remitted by the guild courts
• the Crown's instrument in the county

At the table

It answers to nobody local. It cannot be bought off, nor brought to terms, and it has no officers of its own. Before it come killings that matter to powerful bodies, interference with protected works, exemplary cases of arms, and a great deal of violence between strangers. Trade and apprenticeship it declines, and the Bill it has never once construed. The county keeps no examiner to test an accusation; it follows that whoever first reports a thing stands the likeliest to hang. The Black Rites case of 4457 hanged four, and lies in the court's roll still, but without its depositions. In the case of 4607 the accused was hanged and burnt within the day, and no attendance was recorded. The proctor would pay a company to read the assize calendar for a pattern.