Eyre (legal term)

An eyre or iter, sometimes called a general eyre, was the name of a circuit travelled by an itinerant royal justice in medieval England (a justice in eyre), or the circuit court over which they presided,[1] or the right of the monarch (or justices acting in their name) to visit and inspect the holdings of any vassal. The eyre involved visits and inspections at irregular intervals of the houses of vassals in the kingdom. The term is derived from Old French erre, from Latin iter ("journey"), and is cognate with errand and errant. Eyres were also held in those parts of Ireland under secure English rule from about 1220 onwards, but the eyre system seems to have largely gone into abeyance in Ireland at the end of the thirteenth century, and the last Irish eyre was held in 1322.

  1. ^ "Eyre: Definition, usage and pronunciation - YourDictionary.com". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2008-09-02.