By both the custom of this borough and chartered privilege, the court called the burgh-court is to be convened and held before the bailiffs then in office only once each week; or, at their discretion, [cases] may be adjourned on a weekly basis to a later time, as the occasion requires. In this court are tried all kinds of actions concerning land, debt, detinue, broken contract, [general] trespass, trespass on the case, and all other actions whatever between party and party, following the procedure of the common law of this kingdom.

[Yarmouth’s royal charter of 1208 exempted the town from the jurisdiction of external secular courts (other than those presided over by royal justices) and permitted civil cases in which a burgess was defendant to be tried within the borough, except for actions concerning real property located outside the borough; the charter specified that the borough court be held weekly and that justice be done according to borough custom (although local custom increasingly conformed to common law, still crystallizing in 1208). The oldest surviving court roll dates to about 1262. ]

[The distinction made between the two types of trespass revolved around whether an injury was intentionally and directly caused by the defendant (typically, by vi et armis), or whether the indirect result of some action, not necessarily in itself illegal, taken by the defendant.]