Husting

Husting [fr. hus-thing, A.-S.]. council, curt, tribunal; apparently so called from being held within a building at a time when other courts were held in the open air. It was a local curt. The county curt in the city of London bore this name. There were hustings at York, Winchester, Lincoln, and in other places, similar to the London hustings, Madox, Hist. Excheq., c. xx. Also the raised wooden platform from which candidates for seats in Parliament, prior to the (English) Ballot Act, 1872, addressed the constituency on the occasion of their public oral nomination, and from which a show of hands was taken by the returning officer.

A deliberative assembly, esp. one called by king

or other loader, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 746