Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/119

103 EQUITY JURISDICTION. 103 the spiritual court in that case had but a lame jurisdiction." x As to the precise time when equity first assumed jurisdiction over bills by legatees, there seems to be an absence of evidence ; but there is little room for doubt that it was at an earlier date than that just named. There was, indeed, a serious objection to the jurisdiction of equity over bills by next of kin, which had no existence in the case of bills by legatees ; for it was argued (and not without force) that the Statute of Distributions, 2 on which the rights of next of kin are founded, vested exclusively in the Ordinary the jurisdiction of compelling payment of distributive shares. The Court of Chancery was never content to share with the ecclesiastical courts any jurisdiction exercised by it, and, therefore, as often as it usurped the jurisdiction of the latter courts, it soon found the means of making its own jurisdiction exclusive ; and so it was in the case now under consideration. The Court of Chancery ever lent a willing ear to the complaints of executors who were sued by legatees or next of kin in the ecclesiastical courts ; and it did not hesitate to grant injunctions whenever it was dissatisfied with the mode in which justice was administered by the latter courts; 3 and even when a final sentence had been given in an ecclesiastical court, the Court of Chancery exercised the right of examining it; and, if it disapproved of it, it treated it as a nullity. 4 The jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts over legacies and dis- tributive shares was, therefore, for all practical purposes, speedily destroyed, and for the last two hundred years equity has prac- tically exercised an exclusive jurisdiction over those subjects, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts over the estates of persons deceased having, for the same length of time, been practically limited to taking the probate of wills, granting letters testamentary and of administration, and requiring the filing of inventories by executors and administrators. Equity, having thus acquired concurrent jurisdiction {i.e., con- 1 Matthews v. Newby, 1 Vern. 133 ; Howard v. Howard, id. 134. 2 22 & 23 Car. II., c. 10 (1670). That the statute assumed that the ecclesiastical courts alone would have jurisdiction to enforce the rights created by it, was never doubted ; and the only answer that was ever given to the argument founded on the statute was that the latter contained no negative words, i.e., did not in terms exclude the jurisdiction of equity. See Matthews v. Newby, supra. 8 Vanbrough v. Cock, 1 Ch. Cas. 200; Horrell v. Waldron, 1 Vern. 26; Nicholas v. Nicholas, Ch. Prec. 546; Anon., 1 Atk. 491. But see Basset v. Basset, 3 Atk. 203.
 * Bissell v. Axtell, 2 Vern. 47.