Page:Prerogatives of the Crown.djvu/97

 Ch. VII. Sec. L] Fountain of Justice and Office. 77 legal process against them [a) ; or to take J. S. a notorious robberi and to seize his lands and goods (6), are, respectively, V illegal (f ). Neither can the King grant any new commission which is not warranted by antient precedents, however neces- sary, or conducive to the public good it may appear to be ; and, therefore commissions to assay weights and measures, being of a new invention, were condemned by Parliament (d). V And Lord Coke asserts {e that the King could not authorize persons to take care of rivers, and the fishery therein, accord- ing to the method prescribed by the statute of Westminster the 2nd. ch. 47. before the making of that statute. Subject, however, to these various restrictions, which are constitutionally just and necessary, the King may, generally speaking, by his prerogative, constitute any number of legal and ordinary courts, for the administration of the general law of the land, and appoint them to be held where his Majesty pleas- es (y), unless, as in the case of the Common Pleas {g the Court must, by law, be holden in any certain place. So the King may issue special commissions, for doing justice accord- ing to law, in extraordinary cases, requiring speedy remedy and animadversion ; though in ordinary cases, commissioners of Oyer and Terminer can be granted only to the justices of either bench, or the justices in Eyre (A). The King, by spe- cial commission, may appoint any person to take recognizances, or obligations of record, from one man to another ; and such recognizances, duly certified with the commission into Chance- ry, are binding ; and though the commission be so particular as to mention only a recognizance to be taken from A. to B., yet the commissioners have a general power to take a recogni- zance from any other person (?). It seems, that at the present day a palatinate jurisdiction cannot be erected without an Act of Parliament (^). (a) 4 Ass. 5. Bro. Ab. Commissions, its being adjourned, as well as the 3,15,16. 12Co. 30, 31. 2 Inst. 478. King's Bench, and Exchequer, to Read- (i) 2 Inst. 54. ing, on account of the epidemical sick- (c) And see 13 Ed. 1. st. 1. c. 29. ness in the metropolis in Mich.T. Gar. (rf) 18 Ed. 3. St. 2. c. 1 and 4. 4 1. See 3 Cro. R. 13. Inst. 163. (A) 13 Ed. 1. st. 1. c. 29 and 30. (e) 2 Ibid. 478. See 1 Wooddn. 97. (/) 1 Wooddn. 97. 3 Bla. Com. (0 Bac. Ab. Execution, D. 41, 2. (A) 4 Inst. 204. Cromp. Juris. 139. (g) Magna Charta, ch. 11. but this 2 Bac. Ab. 188. tit. Courts Palatinate, was not taken so strictly as to prevent The