Eyres

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Sessions or circuits of a traveling court or judge ; periods during which judicial proceedings are held in various locations ; official visits or tours by a judge to administer justice in different areas
2. Occasions of a judicial circuit where a judge travels to conduct trials ; times when legal matters are heard outside a central court ; intervals of court proceedings held in diverse places by an itinerant magistrate
3. The act of holding court sessions in various districts by a judge ; designated periods for hearing cases on a legal circuit ; visits by judicial officers to dispense the law in multiple localities

Etymology: "Eyres" is the plural of "eyre," a word that once simply meant a journey. It came into Middle English as "eire" from Old French "erre," which meant a journey, march, or way, and that French word goes back to Latin "iter," meaning a going or a way. The same Latin root sits behind "itinerant," the traveller's word, and "errant," which once described someone wandering on the road before it came to mean misbehaving. The sense of a journey narrowed in English into a legal one. The eyre was the circuit that royal judges travelled through the counties to hear cases, and the plural "eyres" names those rounds of sittings, when the judge arrived in each district in turn. A judge on eyre was literally on the road, carrying the king's justice from town to town, which is why a word for a simple trip ended up naming one of the most important institutions of medieval English government.

Synonyms: assizes, sessions, courts, judicial circuits