Medieval England enjoyed a legal revolution of sorts. Although the police system we're familiar with would be another few centuries away, some of the changes that took place during this period, such as the introduction of trial by jury, led to the justice system that we know today.
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However, as with all systems of law, medieval justice was not without its flaws and brutalities, and some of these seem particularly shocking from a modern perspective.
In the earlier years, the maintenance of law and order was largely the responsibility of lords and local communities. However, from 1176 onwards, royal judges began to make regional visits known as ‘eyres’. These visits were so terrifying that in 1233 the arrival of the justices prominently caused an entire Cornish village to flee into the woods. Eyres were gradually replaced in the later 13th century by a system of local courts known as ‘the assizes’, from the Old French word meaning ‘sitting’ or ‘session’.
Court procedure also changed in the later Middle Ages. Trial by ordeal had been used as an assessment of guilt for a number of years, but was effectively banned by the Pope in 1215. Trial by ordeal involved a suspect to undertake a hazardous activity which would reveal the judgment of God as to their guilt or innocence. The two most common forms of ordeal were trial by hot iron and trial by water.
After trial by order was abolished, there were initially no means to try cases. However trial by jury was eventually offered to suspects as a potential solution in the 1220s. This did, however, cause some headaches (sometimes literally), as it was thought inappropriate to force someone to submit to a jury. For a long time, no-one knew what to do if someone refused this option.
Then, in 1275, it was ordered for such people to be put in ‘hard and strong prison’ (‘prison forte et dure’) to ‘encourage’ them to relent. This soon became understood as ‘peine forte et dure’ (‘strong and hard punishment’). Suspects who refused to elect jury trial were slowly crushed until they either changed their mind or died.