in general, denotes each sitting or assembly of a council, &c.
SESSION of Parliament, is the season or space from its meeting to its prorogation. See Parliament.
Kirk-SESSION, the name of a petty ecclesiastical court in Scotland. See Kirk-Session.
Sessions for weights and measures. In London, four justices from among the mayor, recorder, and aldermen (of whom the mayor and recorder is to be one), may hold a session to inquire into the offences of selling by false weights and measures, contrary to the statutes; and to receive indictments, punish offenders, &c. Char. King Charles I.
Court of SESSION. See Law, Part III. Sect. ii.
Court of Quarter-SESSIONS, an English court that must be held in every county once in every quarter of a year; which by statute 2 Henry V. c. 4. is appointed to be in the first week after Michaelmas-day, the first week after the Epiphany, the first week after the close of Easter, and in the week after the translation of St Thomas the martyr, or the 7th of July. It is held before two or more justices of the peace, one of which must be of the quorum. The jurisdiction of this court, by 34 Edward III. c. 1. extends to the trying and determining all felonies and trespasses whatsoever: though they fel. dom, if ever, try any greater offence than small felonies within the benefit of clergy; their commission providing, that if any case of difficulty rises, they shall not proceed to judgment, but in the presence of one of the justices of the courts of king's-bench or common-pleas, or one of the judges of assize: and therefore murders, and other capital felonies, are usually remitted for a more solemn trial to the assizes. They cannot also try any new-created offence, without express power given them by the statute which creates it. But there are many offences and particular matters which, by particular statutes, belong properly to this jurisdiction, and ought to be prosecuted in this court; as, the smaller misdemeanors against the public or commonwealth, not amounting to felony; and especially offences relating to the game, highways, alehouses, bastard children, the settlement and provision for the poor, vagrants, servants wages, and Popish recusants. Some of these are proceeded upon by indictment: others in a summary way, by motion, and order thereupon; which order may for the most part, unless guarded against by particular statutes, be removed into the court of king's-bench by writ of certiorari facias, and be there either quashed or confirmed. The records or rolls of the sessions are committed to the custody of a special officer, denominated custos rotulorum, who is always a justice of the quorum; and among them of the quorum (faith Lambard) a man for the most part especially picked out, either for wisdom, countenance, or credit. The nomination of the custos rotulorum (who is the principal officer in the county, as the lord-lieutenant is chief in military command) is by the king's sign manual: and to him the nomination of the clerk of the peace belongs; which office he is expressly forbidden to fell for money.
In most corporation-towns there are quarter-sessions kept before justices of their own, within their respective limits; which have exactly the same authority as the general quarter-sessions of the county, except in a very few instances; one of the most considerable of which is the matter of appeals from orders of removal of the poor, which, though they be from the orders of corporation-justices, must be to the sessions of the county, by statute 8 and 9 William III. c. 30. In both corporations and counties at large, there is sometimes kept a special or petty session, by a few justices, for dispatching smaller business in the neighbourhood between the times of the general sessions; as for licensing alehouses, passing the account of parish-officers, and the like.