used in actions at law, together with the letters patent to the King's Justices, are prescribed by the fifth section of the Statute; such as the writ of Novel disseisin (issued to the Sheriff at the request of the person disseised or dispossessed of land, commanding the Sheriff to summon a jury of twelve free and lawful men to decide whether the dispossession had been lawful and then to report to the Justice of Assize); also the writ of Mort d'ancester (giving authority to the Sheriff to summon a jury to determine whether the plaintiffs ancestor was seized or possessed of the lands in question at the day of his death, and if the plaintiff was the lawful heir). There are other writs set forth in the same section, after the model of the same writs in English Jurisprudence.
Actions for personal trespasses wherein the damages did not exceed forty shillings were pleaded before the Sheriff in the County Court; above that sum, before the Justice of Wales. Pleas of lands were not to be determined by wager of battle nor by the grand assize. The procedure is fully set out in the Statute. In trials of assize of Mort d'ancester, the claimant of the property could be resisted, if illegitimate, on the ground of bastardy, a fact which was inquired into by the Bishop of the place, who certified the result of his inquiry to the Chief Justice of Wales.
The Assizes were to be taken in the respective counties before the Justice twice, thrice, or four times yearly. Causes in actions relating to land, immovables, and movable property were to be tried before juries. There were to be formal pleadings before the case was tried, viz., documents in which the grounds of action and issues were clearly expressed. It was, however, specially enacted that any formal defect in these pleadings was not to fall within that hard rule which was the reproach of the Roman law at one time, and of the English law at a later period, viz., that a technical mistake vitiated the whole proceedings. He who failed in a syllable was not to fail in his cause.
