Appeals and serious cases came before the judges from the four central courts, who went on circuit twice a year to hold the assize in the county towns. On these occasions the high sheriff empanelled a grand jury of 23 JPs. The grand jury was a jury of indictment. It decided the work of the judges. At the conclusion of the assize and its accompanying business, the grand jury was disbanded.

The petty jury was the jury of trial. It differed from the modern jury, which is expected to be ignorant of the case: the eighteenth-century jury often knew about the case and the reputation of the defendant. They also had a knowledge of local customs and the local version of Irish or dialect, which was sometimes useful. According to 11 Geo. II, c. 6, proceedings were to be in English and not in Latin, French or any other language. It is interesting that many counties employed a salaried official known as the interpreter; this indicates at least a desire that justice should be available to all.

Contrary to this were local patronage and self-interest, as well as the possibility of intimidation. For instance, in the 1780s, absenteeism, profit rents and the high returns from the provision trade combined with a shortage of qualified Protestant landlords to produce an acute shortage of magistrates ‘of education, experience or hereditary respectability’. Consequently, unsuitable magistrates were appointed and brought justice into disrepute in an already alienated society, for ‘upon slight suspicion, or vague information, they took up and imprisoned many who were innocent.’

Most criminals in the eighteenth century went unapprehended. The severity of punishment was indicative of the difficulty not only of apprehending the criminal but of obtaining a conviction, and it was probably counterproductive as it increased the reluctance of witnesses to testify or victims to prefer charges. For instance, in September 1747 John Todd, the agent of Thomas Lennard Barrett, who had a considerable estate near Clones, Co. Monaghan, reported that he had:

not been one day from this place the seven weeks past only four or five days at the Assizes, and as you were so kind to make me a freeholder that obliges my attendance there, and subjects me to be on Petit Juries, as well as nisi prius and Grand Juries which I heartily felt at the very last Assizes.

Todd’s letter reveals some of the difficulties and discomforts that his duties involved: he had been part of a hung jury on a trial for coin forgery. Forging coins was a capital offence, and four of the jury ‘without giving us any sort of reason but that their consciences being Presbyterian would not allow them’ had refused to convict, ‘so we were all confined in the Jury Room all night without any fire only candlelight’. Eventually a retrial was ordered at the next assizes.

Assizes aimed at clearing rather than filling gaols, thus transportation or execution was the punishment for most serious crime, and even for what would now be considered minor offences. Executions, intended as deterrents to potential criminals, were public spectacles and well attended. There was little provision for long-term prisoners.

The Sheriff was the executive officer of the county on both the civil and the criminal side. He was appointed annually and was usually the representative of one of the leading gentry families in the county where he was serving or another county. He presided in person over parliamentary elections, but usually delegated his assize executive duties – such as looking after prisoners – to one or more deputies. These under- or sub-sheriffs were required to take an oath against corruption.

Nevertheless, parliament remained exceedingly suspicious about them, and passed statutes to control their and the Sheriff’s activities. By 1760 the office had become a burden, and government ‘had to induce gentlemen of credit and fortune to take it’. The assize could be described as the point at which local and central government met, and the grand jury, which included the leading gentry or, in the case of some of the nobility, their representatives, received a charge or talk from the senior judge on circuit.

Following the assizes, the Sheriff in each county would arrange for transportations. Irish records on transportation were notoriously badly kept, but it was reported to the House of Lords in 1743 that over the past seven years 1,890 convicts had been transported at a cost of £8,428 – approximately half of these, 937, came from the province of Leinster, and of these 465 were from the city of Dublin. The outbreak of the War of American Independence closed this outlet, and in 1778 parliament (17 & 18 Geo. III, c. 9) made alternative provision for convicts by allocating them to the Ballast Board to work on the improvement of Dublin harbour.

After the American war an attempt was made to resume transportation to North America. By 1786 convicts were again being sent across the Atlantic at the rate of about 180 per annum when the admiral on duty on the Newfoundland station suddenly refused to accept any more. A ship-load of 80 was turned back, to the confusion and consternation of the Irish government which, thereafter, was forced to adopt the more expensive alternative of sending them to the new penal settlement in Australia, where they were equally unwelcome.