In establishing these separate ecclesiastical courts, the Conqueror made a serious departure from his leading idea of centralization; and he thereby greatly contributed to build up a distinct theocratic power, which afterwards, while intrenching on the rights of the laity, intrenched also very seriously on the authority of his successors on the throne. But this was a danger which either he did not foresee – since he possessed, though his next successor relinquished it, the sole power of appointing bishops – or which he overlooked in his anxiety to diminish the importance of the old Saxon tribunals.
Both the civil and criminal authority of the local courts was greatly curtailed. Their jurisdiction in criminal cases was restricted to small matters, and even as to questions of property was limited to cases in which the amount in dispute did not exceed forty shillings; though, considering the superior weight of the shilling at that time, the greater comparative value in those ages of the precious metals, and the poverty of the country, this was still a considerable sum.
The general plan for the administration of justice of the Anglo-Norman government was a court baron in each of the baronies into which the kingdom was now parcelled out, to decide such controversies as arose between the several vassals or subjects of the same barony. Hundred courts and county courts still continued from the Saxon times, though with restricted authority, to judge between the subjects of different baronies; and a court composed of the king’s great officers to give sentence among the barons themselves. Of this court, which ultimately became known as Curia Regis, (King’s Court,) and sometimes as Aula Regis, (King’s Hall,) because it was held in the hall of the king’s palace, and of its instrumentality in extending the royal authority, Hume5 gives the following account: “The king himself often sat in his court, which always attended his person: he there heard causes and pronounced judgment; and though he was assisted by the advice of the other members, it is not to be imagined that a decision could easily be obtained contrary to his inclination or opinion.6 In the king’s absence, the chief justiciary presided, who was the first magistrate of the state, and a kind of viceroy, on whom depended all the civil affairs of the kingdom.7 The other chief officers of the crown, the constable, marshal, seneschal, or steward, chamberlain, treasurer, and chancellor, were members, together with such feudal barons as thought proper to attend, and the barons of the exchequer, who at first were also feudal barons appointed by the king. This court, which was sometimes called the King’s Court, sometimes the Court of Exchequer, judged in all causes, civil and criminal, and comprehended the whole business which is now shared out among four courts – the Chancery, the King’s Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer.
“Such an accumulation of powers was itself a great source of authority, and rendered the jurisdiction of the court formidable to all the subjects; but the turn which judicial trials took soon after the conquest served still more to increase its authority, and to augment the royal prerogatives. William, among the other violent changes which he attempted and effected, had introduced the Norman law into England, had ordered all the pleadings to be in that tongue, and had interwoven with the English jurisprudence all the maxims and principles which the Normans, more advanced in cultivation, and naturally litigious, were accustomed to observe in the administration of justice.
“Law now became a science,8 which at first fell entirely into the hands of the Normans, and even after it was communicated to the English, required so much study and application that the laity of those ignorant ages were incapable of attaining it, and it was a mystery almost solely confined to the clergy, and chiefly to the monks.
“The great officers of the crown, and the feudal barons who were military men, found themselves unfit to penetrate into these obscurities; and though they were entitled to a seat in the supreme judicature, the business of the court was wholly managed by the chief justiciary and the law barons, who were men appointed by the king, and entirely at his disposal. This natural course of things was forwarded by the multiplicity of business which flowed into that court, and which daily augmented by the appeals from all the subordinate judicatures of the kingdom. For the great power of the Conqueror established at first in England an authority which the monarchs in France were not able to attain till the reign of St. Louis, who lived near two centuries after: he empowered his court to receive appeals both from the courts of barony and the county courts, and by that means brought the administration of justice ultimately into the hands of the sovereign.9
“And lest the expense or trouble of the journey to court should discourage suitors and make them acquiesce in the decision of the inferior judicatures, itinerant judges were afterwards established, who made their circuits through the kingdom and tried all cases that were brought before them. By this expedient the courts of barony were kept in awe, and if they still preserved some influence it was only from the apprehensions which the vassals might entertain of disobliging their superior by appealing from his jurisdiction. But the county courts were much discredited and as the freeholders were found ignorant of the intricate principles and forms of the new law, the lawyers gradually brought all business before the king’s judges, and abandoned that convenient, simple, and popular judicature.”
The innovations of the Conqueror and his successors having reduced the old local Anglo-Saxon tribunals to comparative insignificance, the whole judicial authority, except that which had been seized upon by the ecclesiastical courts, remained for a hundred and fifty years after the conquest concentrated in the Aula Regis. But as Norman and Saxon became thoroughly intermixed, with the first faint dawn of modern English liberty the judicial power thus thoroughly centralized became again subdivided and distributed, though in a manner very different from that of the Saxon times.
The Anglo-Norman kings of England were perpetually on the move: the only way of disposing of the products of the landed estates which scattered over England afforded the main part of the royal revenue, was to go thither with the royal household and consume it on the spot. Wherever the king went, the Aula Regis followed, occasioning thereby great inconvenience and delay to suitors. This was complained of as a grievance, and the barons who extorted Magna Charta from their reluctant sovereign insisted, among other things, that Common Pleas, that is, civil suits between man and man, should be held in some certain place. It was in this provision of Magna Charta that originated the English Court of Common Pleas, which became fixed at Westminster Hall, the place of session of the Aula Regis when the king was in the vicinity of London. This Court of Common Pleas, or Common Bench as it was sometimes called, seems to have been at first but a mere committee of the Aula Regis; and the disintegration of that tribunal, thus begun, was, on the accession of Edward I. in 1272, completed by its resolution into three or rather five distinct tribunals.
Of these new courts, that which more immediately represented the Aula Regis was the Court of King’s Bench, which still continued to follow the king and to be held in his presence. In the language of its process, such is still supposed to be the case; but like the other English courts, it has long since been fixed at Westminster Hall, and admits nobody to participate in its proceedings save its own members – a chief justice, who, though of inferior position in point of precedence, may be considered as in some respects the successor of the chief justiciary, which office was now abolished – and three or four puisne judges, the number having varied at different times.
The Court of Common Pleas was now also organized like the King’s Bench, with a chief justice and three or four puisne judges. As this court had exclusive jurisdiction of civil suits, (except those relating to marriage, divorce, wills, tithes, and the distribution of the personal property of intestates, which had been usurped by the ecclesiastical courts,) Pleas of the Crown, that is, the criminal jurisprudence of the realm, (except prosecutions for heresy, of which the ecclesiastical courts claimed jurisdiction,) and also the hardly less important duty of superintending the other tribunals, even the Common Pleas itself, and keeping them within their due limits, was assigned to the King’s Bench.
To a third