The Assize Rolls (Rotuli Assisarum) are preserved in the National Archives (TNA) under the designation JUST 1

 

1. The Post-Barons' War Criminal Fallout (1266-1272)

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The months following the 1266 Siege of Kenilworth were chaotic.   The royal army left behind a deeply unstable local landscape filled with rogue soldiers, displaced peasants, and heavily armed factions settling scores.

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• 1268 (52 Henry III - JUST 1/952, m. 4): A local murder trial where a peasant from Kenilworth town is accused of killing a soldier.   The defendant argues the soldier was a leftover straggler from the royal siege train who was actively trying to rob his home and steal his livestock.

• 1269 (53 Henry III - JUST 1/954, m. 7d): A dramatic trespass and assault case brought by the Prior of Kenilworth.   He sues several men who broke into the priory's granges during the recent siege, claiming they violently stole the monastery’s winter stores of grain to sell to the garrison inside the castle.

• 1272 (56 Henry III - JUST 1/955, m. 11): A ‘Novel Disseisin’ [unlawful land-grabbing] plea.   A minor landowner sues a neighbouring knight for taking his property while the courts were closed during the Barons' War.   The knight argues the land was legally seized because the plaintiff was actively aiding the rebels inside Kenilworth Castle by smuggling arrows to them.

 

2. The Great Despenser Civil War Era (1321-1326)

 

In the 1320s, England descended back into civil war as Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, fought King Edward II and his favourites, the Despensers.   In Warwickshire, Lancaster used Kenilworth as his administrative base, generating considerable friction, as recorded by the traveling justices.

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• 1322 (16 Edward II - JUST 1/971, m. 3): A special royal commission of Oyer and Terminer (to hear and determine serious crimes) held right after the Earl of Lancaster was executed.   The roll tracks a sweep of local arrests of Lancaster’s personal retainers and cross-references them with the military weapons and armour left stockpiled in the armouries of Kenilworth Castle.

• 1324 (17 Edward II - JUST 1/973, m. 8d): An indictment against local poachers.   The traveling judges investigate an organized gang that breached the Hay of Kenilworth (the castle's private park) and stole over forty deer while the castle was briefly transitioning between royal keepers.

 

3. Fourteenth-Century Trespasses and Labor Violations (1350-1390)

 

After the Black Death (1448-1349), labour was scarce.   When John of Gaunt began his incredibly ambitious, lavish architectural rebuilding of Kenilworth Castle, his managers used the local courts to control the regional workforce.

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• 1362 (36 Edward III - JUST 1/977, m. 2): A case involving the enforcement of the Statute of Laborers.   John of Gaunt’s master mason brings a suit against three local stonemasons who allegedly broke their contracts and fled Kenilworth Castle to take higher-paying private work elsewhere in the county.

• 1385 (9 Richard II - JUST 1/983, m. 14): A boundary and water rights lawsuit between local millers and the castle authorities.   The millers argued that the castle's engineers had altered the sluice gates of the Great Mere (the castle's artificial lake) to keep the water levels high for the castle's defence and luxury boating, which subsequently starved the local downstream grain mills of water power.

 

4. Fifteenth-Century County Outlawries (1400-1460)

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As the Assize records shifted into the Lancastrian era, Kenilworth was a heavily protected royal sanctuary, meaning it frequently featured in cases involving fugitive criminals.

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• 1411 (12 Henry IV - JUST 1/1514, m. 6): An entry regarding a thief who successfully escaped the county jail in Warwick and fled to Kenilworth.   The roll tracks the legal process against the local constables for letting him escape into the castle's jurisdiction, where normal county sheriffs were barred from entering without a special royal warrant.