Grand Assize
The Grand Assize (or Assize of Windsor) was a legal instrument set up in 1179 by King Henry II of England, to allow tenants to transfer disputes over land from feudal courts to the royal court. == Origins == Given the capacity of feudal justice for delay, and the arbitrariness of its methods of judgement (duel, ordeal), 12th C England had ample room for an alternative method of settling property disputes; and Henry II – acclaimed by Walter Map as one "clever in devising new and undiscovered legal procedure" – saw in the Grand Assize a means of preserving social order, avoiding the violence of self-help in the countryside, and at the same time of increasing royal revenue at the same time through the judicial system.