or Banc, in Law, has various significations. Free-Bench signifies that estate in copyhold-lands which the wife, being espoused a virgin, has, after the decease of her husband, for her dower, according to the custom of the manor. With respect to this free-bench, different manors have different customs.

King's Bench, a court in which the king was formerly accustomed to sit in person, and which on that account was moved with the king's household. This was originally the only court in Westminster Hall, and from it the courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer are supposed to have been derived. As the king in person is still presumed in law to sit in this court, though only represented by his judges, it is said to have supreme authority; and the proceedings in it are supposed to be coram nobis, that is, before the king. This court consists of a lord chief justice and three other justices or judges, who are invested with a sovereign jurisdiction over all matters, whether of a criminal or public nature. The chief justice has a salary of L.10,000, and the other judges of L.5500 each.

All crimes against the public good, though they do not injure any particular person, are under the cognizance of this court; nor can any private subject suffer unlawful violence or injury against his person, liberty, or possessions, without a proper remedy being afforded him here, not only for satisfaction of damages sustained, but for the punishment of the offender; and wherever this court meets with an offence contrary to the first principles of justice, it may punish it by its own authority. It frequently proceeds on indictments found before other courts, and removed by certiorari into this. Persons illegally committed to prison, though by the king and council, or by either house of parliament, may be bailed in it, and in some cases even upon legal commitments. Writs of mandamus are issued by this court, for the restoring of officers in corporations unjustly turned out, freemen wrongfully disfranchised, and in a variety of other cases.

The court of king's bench is now divided into a crown side and plea side; the one determining criminal, and the other civil causes. On the crown side, or crown office, it takes cognizance of all criminal causes, from high treason down to the most trivial misdemeanour or breach of the peace. Into this court also indictments from all inferior courts may be removed by writ of certiorari, and tried either at bar or at nisi prius by a jury of the county out of which the indictment is brought. The judges of this court are the supreme coroners of the kingdom; and the court itself is the principal court of criminal jurisdiction known to the laws of England. On the plea side, this court determines all personal actions commenced by bill or writ; as actions of debt, upon the case, detinue, trover, ejectment, trespass, waste, &c. against any person in the custody of the marshal of the court, as every person sued here is supposed to be sued by law. The officers on the crown side are the clerk and secondary of the crown; and on the side of the pleas there are two chief clerks or prothonotaries, and their secondary and deputy, the custos brevium, two clerks of the papers, the clerk of the declarations, the signer and sealer of bills, the clerk of the rules, the clerk of the errors, and the clerk of the bails; to which may be added, the filazers, the marshal of the court, and the crier.