VOCUM, on account of its application to a great variety of objects, in many of which neither the etymology of the word nor its original meaning can be readily traced. In this article it is proposed to enumerate and explain in a summary manner the various signification of the term.
1. The term assize also signified an ordinance or decree made either imme diately by the king or by virtue of some delegation of the royal authority. Thus the Assizes of Jerusalem were a code of feudal laws for the new kingdom of Jerusalem, formed in 1099, by an assem bly of the Latin barons, and of the clergy and laity, under Godfrey of Bouillon. (Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. xi. p. 93.) In this sense also, in ancient English his tory, Fleta speaks of "the laws, customs, and assizes of the realm" (lib. i. cap. 17); and the ordinances made by the great council of nobles and prelates assembled by Henry II. in 1164, and commonly known as the " Constitutions of Claren don," are called by Hoveden " Assisce Henrici Regis factse apud Clarendonnm." In like manner the assizes of the forest were rules and regulations made by the courts to which the management of the royal forests belonged.
2. Analogous to these were the assizes or ordinances regulating the price of bread, ale, fuel, and other common ne cessaries of life, called in Latin assisa venalium. The earliest express notice of any regulation of this kind in England is in the reign of King John (1203), when a proclamation was made throughout the kingdom enforcing the observance of the legal assize of bread ; but it is probable that there were more ancient ordinances of the same kind. In very early times these " assisze venalium" appear to have been merely royal ordinances, and their arrangement and superintendence were under the direction of the clerk of the market of the king's household. But subsequently many statutes were regulating the assize of articles mon consumption; the earliest of these is the assize of bread and ale, "assisa penis et oervisite," commonly called the stat. of 51 Henry III., though its precise date is somewhat doubtful. The provisions of the act with regard to ale, which esta blished a scale of prices varying with the price of wheat, were altered in some measure by 23 Henry VIII. c„ 4, which left a discretionary power with the jus tices of the peace of fixing the price of ale within their jurisdiction [ALE] ; but the assize of bread was imposed by this act, and enforced from time to time by orders of the privy council until the reign of Queen Anne. In cities and towns corporate the power of regulating the assize of bread and ale was frequently given by charter to the local authorities, and the interference of the clerk of the king's household was often expressly ex eluded. Books of assize were formerly published, under authority of the privy council, by the clerk of the market of the king's household. The stat. 8 Anne, c. 19, repealed the 51 Henry III. and imposed a new assize of bread, and made various other regulations respecting it. Several
subsequent acts have been passed on the subject ; but by the 55 George III. c. 99, the practice was expressly abolished in London and its neighbourhood, and in other places it has fallen into disuse. There was also an assize of wood and coal (stat 34 & 35 Henry VIII. c. 3); and in the reign of Queen Anne, we find an act (9 Anne, c. 20) enforcing former re gulations for the assize of billet (firewood). these, various other articles, wine, fish, tiles, cloth, &c., have at dif ferent times been subject to assize. In deed the legislature of this country for a long time supposed that they could and ought to fix the price of the necessaries of life. But experience has shown that to attempt to fix by law the prices of com modities, is not only useless and mischie vous, but impracticable ; and that when government has established a uniform scale of weights and measures, and, so far as it can be done, a uniform measure of value, the rest may safely be left to competition, and to the mutual bargain ing which takes place between the buyer and the seller.
There is an assize of bread in several parts of the Continent at the present time. In Paris, since 1825, the assize of bread has been Exed every fifteen days by an order of the police. This assize is regulated according to the prices of corn and of flour, which are published between the dates of each order. In the city of Co logne, and probably elsewhere in Prussia, the price of the loaf of black bread weigh ing eight (German) pounds is now (1844) fixed weekly by an order issued from the " royal police-office." Kent, in his ' Commentaries on Ameri can Law,' says that " Corporation ordi nances, in some of our cities, have fre quently regulated the price of meats in the market;" and he states that " the regulation of prices in bins and taverns is still the practice in New Jersey and Ala bama, and perhaps in other states; and the rates of charges are, or were until recently, established in New Jersey by the county courts and affixed up at inns, in like manner as the rates of toll at toll gates and bridges." (Vol. ii. p. 330, ed.
1842.) 3. The word assize also denoted the peculiar kind of jury by whom the writ of right was formerly tried, who were called the grand assize. The trial by the grand assize is said to have been devised by Chief Justice Glanville, in the reign of Henry II., and was a great improve ment upon the trial by judicial combat, which it in a great degree superseded. Instead of being left to the determination by battle, which had previously been the only mode of deciding a writ of right, the alternative of a trial by the grand assize was offered to the tenant or defendant. Upon his choosing this mode of trial, 14 writ issued to the sheriff directing him to return four knights, by whom twelve others were to be elected, and the whole sixteen composed the jury or grand assize by whom the matter of right was The act of parliament, 3 & 4 Will. IV c. 27, has now abolished this mode of triaL