Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/482

 468 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY redressing grievances which from the time of James and Bacon ^ had been fostering rebelhon, forestalled the law- reformers, not of the Restoration only, but of our own age. The legislators of 1641 had struck blindly at all courts which seemed to them arbitrary or peculiar ; they had not asked how far these were due to the faults of the Common Law, to the wants of society, tc the difficulty of travelling. That year had seen the Privy Council, the Stannary Court, the Forest Court, nominally regulated, but, in fact, para- lyzed, the Court of Chivalry abolished by resolution, the Courts of Star Chamber, of Requests and of High Com- mission, and the right of temporal jurisdiction, which was among the " royal rights " of the Bishops of Durham and of Ely, taken away by statutes. With the Star Chamber the Palatine courts, as far as they were its antitypes, and the Courts of the Councils of Wales and of the North fell to the ground. Nay, it was forbidden to erect such tribu- nals.^ But the necessity for them was overwhelming: di- versity of usage, caused by difference of circumstances, made it possible to pass a bill for the uniformity of law. Take, for instance, the series of High Courts of Justice constituted to try the King, the democrat Lilburn, the Roy alists Hamilton, Holland, Norwich, Capel and Owen, con- stituted again or continued in 1650, again in 1651, again in 1652, again in 1653, again for the trial of Gerard and Vowel in 1654, again in 1656. Besides these, the jurisdiction of which was national, there was one erected in 1650 for Nor- folk and Norwich, Suffolk, Huntingdonshire, Cambridge- shire, Lincolnshire and the Isle of Ely. They were consti- tuted sometimes by Parliament, sometimes, seemingly, by the Executive. They were not meant to be perpetual ; but they were meant to reach by Equity crimes and criminals which Common and Statute Law and public opinion would not have reached. Clarendon calls them " a new form." Rather they were suggested by the Star Chamber, in favour of which Law," A 4: Bacon, "Works" [e. g. vol. 10, ed. Spedding: essay "of Judicature:" "D# Augm. Sc.:" "Henry VII."] »St. 16 and 17 Car. i. cc. 10, 11, 15, 16, 28: Comm. Journ.: Clar. bks. 3 and 4.
 * J. Coke, "The vindication of the profession and professors of the