Charles Cottu, On the Administration of Criminal Justice in England, 1822, Excerpts

Charles Cottu describes, based on first-hand observation, how the Assize courts worked in 1820. He begins with the pomp and circumstance of the biannual visit of the Assize judges to the Assize town. Cottu recognized that the death penalty was not rigorously inflicted. Cottu’s observations have served historians well. They lie behind many of the compelling judgments about early-modern justice made by historians John Beattie and John Langbein. Cottu’s observations should also give pause to those historians who insist that the courts were essentially a theatre of class justice. The forging and uttering of banknotes was punishable with death, while the possession of forged notes, with intent to utter, was visited only by transportation.