A Concise History of the Common Law. Theodore F. T. Plucknett

will discuss the darker side of this picture, and the emergency measures which the prerogative courts resorted to in restoring tranquillity after the Wars of the Roses. But although (as that chapter will show) the great contribution of the Tudors lay in the field of prerogative courts, nevertheless they did carry out some notable reforms in the common law courts as well.

THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER

We have already noticed the growth of the Exchequer of Plea, and its pretensions to become more than a purely revenue court.² During the middle ages it seems to have held common pleas from time to times but certainly not in any great number. During the sixteenth century it is said to have claimed a general jurisdiction over many sorts of common pleas by means of the fiction that one of the parties was a Crown debtor,³ and this claim was admitted. For a long time the judges of the court (technically called Barons¹) had been lawyers (although not necessarily serjeants). The history of this has never been explored, but it is clear that, by means unknown, the barons of the exchequer steadily raised their position until, in 1579, Queen Elizabeth, in making a new appointment, expressly gave the new baron an equal status with the judges of the other common law courts, and for the future the barons of the Exchequer shared with the justices of the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas the duties of going on circuit. Henceforth there were to be three common law courts of first instance.

THE EXCHEQUER CHAMBER, 1585

Late in the reign of Elizabeth still further confusion² was created by the erection of yet a third court in the Exchequer chamber. The Court of King’s Bench had succeeded in acquiring a good deal of jurisdiction which once was peculiar to the Court of Common Pleas, and so acted as a court of first instance in these matters. If such actions had been brought in the Common Pleas, error would have lain to the King’s Bench; but when they were now brought in the King’s Bench in the first instance, error lay only to Parliament. Here the difficulty arose. Parliaments were originally held several times a year; Elizabeth summoned but ten in a reign of forty-five years, and so for long periods there was no court in existence which could hear the errors of the King’s Bench. To meet this situation two statutes³ erected a new court to hear errors from the King’s Bench. This court was to consist of all the judges of the other two common law courts—the Common Pleas, and those Barons of the Exchequer who were also serjeants—sitting together in the Exchequer chamber, and at least six were necessary before judgment could be given. Their decision was subject to further proceedings in error in Parliament, and the second statute explained that a party could still go directly from King’s Bench to Parliament if he chose.⁴ There was thus the disadvantage of an intermediate court of appeal, together with the anomaly that the use of that court was optional. A still further defect was that it was very difficult to assemble six of the justices and barons. The statutory body was not a court with fixed meetings every term, but a special assembly which might or might not meet—and it seems to have depended upon the influence of the litigants whether it met or not. If it did not meet at the date to which the case had been adjourned, then the record was discontinued. True, the second statute remedied this by saying that the absence of the judges shall not discontinue the process, but no effective means were ever provided for getting the court together within a reasonable period.

      The same inadequate concession was made in respect of the other Exchequer chamber body to hear errors from the Exchequer of Pleas,¹ and with the same disappointing results.

THE KING’S BENCH

      The fact that these special arrangements had to be made for the review of judgments given in the King’s Bench will show that that court was enjoying unusually good business during the sixteenth century. The preamble to the earlier of the two statutes cited explains that the new court shall hear writs of error brought on “actions or suits of debt, detinue, covenant, account, action on the case, ejectione firmæ, and trespass” in the King’s Bench. These seven actions properly belonged to the Court of Common Pleas. Trespass (and ejectione firmæ resembled trespass) seems also to have been part of the original jurisdiction of the King’s Bench, but during the middle ages the only trespasses usually brought in the King’s Bench were those of unusual violence or importance.² Most of this jurisdiction, therefore, had been acquired at a later period, and by somewhat devious means.

We have already mentioned the conflict of the King’s Bench with the Exchequer and with the Common Pleas in the fourteenth century;³ in the fifteenth century a second effort brought the King’s Bench once more into competition, if not into conflict, with the Common Pleas. The device employed in order to acquire the wide jurisdiction mentioned in Elizabeth’s statute⁴ of 1585 was fairly commonly used in the reign of Henry VI and was in constant use throughout the Tudor period. A bill of Middlesex made the defendant actually or fictitiously a prisoner in the custody of the marshall of the court’s marshalsea. This done, the court could entertain any sort of action against him since he was already within the jurisdiction of the court—a principle, moreover, which most courts professed. In such cases the proceedings were by bill instead of by original writ. Before the end of the century means were found⁵ whereby the defendant could be really arrested if he would not voluntarily admit that he was technically in the custody of the marshall, and so the new procedure served as the complete equivalent of an original writ. Throughout the sixteenth century the court enjoyed this usurped jurisdiction, with curious results. The competition between King’s Bench and Common Pleas was sometimes not merely a matter of offering procedural advantages, but sometimes even in offering better substantive law. Thus in at least one matter, which we shall refer to later,¹ the two courts deliberately competed by offering two different rules of law for litigants to choose from, and in the end it was the more enlightened rule which prevailed.

PREROGATIVE WRITS

      There is another aspect of the King’s Bench during this period which deserves attention, and that is the growth of the “prerogative” writs. The history of mandamus, certiorari, prohibition and some other similar writs is still unwritten,² but it is clear that they first become important during the Tudor period, and that they were a proper development of the jurisdiction of the King’s Bench, for that court had long been close to the Council in the exercise of royal discretion in judicial matters. The writs themselves seem to have been originally mere administrative orders from superior officials to their subordinates telling them to do something, to give some information, or the like. Clearly, the King’s Bench was making a great contribution to public law when it adapted these writs to legal purposes, and assumed the task of directing them as occasion required to various departments of central and local government. When one considers the enormous activity of the King’s Council under the Tudors, it is a little surprising that the Council should have allowed the court to handle the prerogative writs, for it seems just as likely that the Council itself should have undertaken to supervise local officers by its own purely administrative machinery. If it had done so it is clear that our constitutional law would have been very different.

THE TUDORS AND LOCAL COURTS

In spite of their centralising policy, the Tudors realised that there was a proper place and function for the older local jurisdictions and so they attempted to prevent their continuing decline. To this end an act³ was passed in 1601 which is a striking example of the unforeseen effects of legislation. It was enacted that in certain personal actions a successful plaintiff shall not recover more costs than damages, if the justices certify that the damages are less than forty shillings. The object of the act was to exclude small cases from the courts at Westminster, where costs were out of all proportion to the issues at stake. The statute operated not on the verdict but on the judges’ certificate. Evasion of the act became general,¹ and in many cases judges were loath to grant a certificate which would deprive a successful plaintiff of his costs. Full use of it was not made until the middle of the eighteenth century, but in the meantime other statutes² continued its policy, notably in actions of slander.³