55 and [is] very easy, and [one is] out of home about three weeks”.Chief Justice Willes advised Ryder that the Norwich assizes were sometimes very long.^' Ryder noted that it was the custom to begin the Home Circuit with Hertford, and it was usual to set out fromLondon about nine o’clock of a Monday morning, but not to go into court until the next day, saving the afternoon of the first day for a ceremonial dinner, to be followed by visits with the counsel. With regard to substantive questions of law, Ryder noted: “It is usual for a judge on circuit to adjourn a matter over for the opinion of all the judges or of the judges of their own court, suspending judgment until that opinion, and then giving judgment accordingly, whether criminal or not”. This was mentioned to Ryder by his fellow King’s Bench judges as frequently done, “[b]ut this must be by taking the verdict subject to the opinion of the judge or the court afterwards, upon a rule I suppose to be made by consent”.” mechanics of this process require some explanation. The accumulated business at the assizes would be a mixture of cases on the Crown and plea sides. The Crown cases would all be in King’s Bench, but the cases on the plea side might be cases that originated” in any of the three royal courts of general civil jurisdiction — King’s Bench, Common Pleas or Exchequer. All, or as many as possible, of the cases docketed would be heard by the two judges assigned to a particular circuit. By tradition, the pair of judges would be drawn from two different courts, or if necessary, one of the two would be a Serjeant-at-law. As a result, it was common for a case to be tried by a judge who was not a member of the court where any further proceedings in the case would transpire. Obviously this was true for all Crown cases when the Crown list was taken by an assize judge who was not a member of the Court of King’s Bench. In his diary, Ryder wrote that it was usual for a judge on the circuit “to adjourn a matter over for the opinion of all the judges or of the judges of their own court”. Only in Crown cases, however, was there a custom to refer a question of law arising on assize to all twelve judges for resolution. Examples can be found in Leach’s Reports, for example Rex v. Varley,^^ tried by Justice Gould of C.B. at the Lent Assizes for York, 1771.^^ When a question of law arose in a case on the plea side, the practice was to refer the case back to the full The Ryder Diary, 23 April 1754. Ryder Diary, 14 June 1754. Ryder Diary, 19 June 1754, 24 July 1754. Ryder Diary, 15 and 23 May 1754. The centralized court systemrequired that nisi prius cases be initiated by a filing in London in one of the three royal courts, where, technically, the cases would be heard unless before (nisi prius) the dates set for hearing, the cases were taken up at the assizes. Leach 75. There are a number of additional examples in Leach’s Reports - for example Rex v. Alford, p. 154; Rex V. Snow, p. 155; Rex v. Spalding, p. 217; Rex v. Hawkeswood, p. 246; Rex v. Brasier, p. 346, etc.
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