People, Place and Power – The Grand Jury System in Ireland

44 2.3. Judicial records: assizes court books Assizes sessions initially emerged as judicial sittings, which explains the requirement for two justices to attend, one dealing with civil, the other with criminal, cases. It was for the grand jury to determine if the bill of indictment, or written accusation, against an accused person was a ‘true bill’ or ‘no bill’. A ‘true bill’ meant that a prima facia case had been established and the case could proceed. Court books, records of the cases heard at assizes sessions, provide interesting views on crime and security. Large numbers of cases could be heard at an assizes sitting, and cases were usually dealt with swiftly. A manuscript grand jury book for County Monaghan, for example, details presentment sessions and court sessions from 1794 to 1831. To take a single instance, the spring 1811 court assizes dealt with 96 cases, recording the names of 111 prosecutors and 141 prosecuted. Scant details are provided – only the broad category of the crime and the finding is given in each case. Thus, we see 54 cases of misdemeanour, 25 of felony, 10 of trespass, 3 of rape and 2 of assault, along with two instances of vagrants being sentenced to transportation. ‘True bill’ findings were issued in 59 cases and acquittals (‘no bill’) in 35 cases. The remaining 2 cases involved transportation for vagrancy. ‘County Lowth Grand Jury’: Leather-Bound Volume of parliamentary statutes Courtesy of Louth County Archives Service