Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/708

 694 V. BENCH AND BAR pounds a year ; but it was all squandered by his son, another John Popham. One court — the Court of Requests — that fulfilled a very important function during this period has long been for- gotten. It was a court for civil causes — a companion court to the Star Chamber (which devoted itself to criminal cases). Its duty was to hear the causes of those suitors who were denied justice in the common law courts. Wolsey established one branch of the court at Whitehall, while another branch followed the sovereign. Wolsey's fame as a churchman has wholly obscured his high reputation as a judge. In the court of chancery, in spite of his manifold duties as Prime Minister, he was regular and punctual, and his decrees were invariably sound. He made the Court of Requests emphat- ically a court to redress the injustice of jury trials. Those who failed before juries on account of the corruption of the panel or the power of their adversaries found them- selves protected in the Court of Requests, which followed the chancery practice and was not hampered by a jury. Here the tenants of land appealed for justice against their landlords, here the copyholders sought relief against the enclosures of the commons and waste lands of the manors. The Protector Somerset owed his fall to his active interven- tion against the landholders ; and the strict impartiality of Wolsey 's justice and the sternness with which he repressed the lawlessness of powerful nobles aided in his destruction. The Court of Requests was in continual collision with the common law courts. Coke invented certain imaginary judgments in order to destroy it. But the court held on, and in 1627 Henry Montague, a grandson of the Chief Justice, a very able lawyer, came to preside in this court, and gave it such a high reputation that it had almost as many suits and clients as the chancery. Blackstone ^ tells us that this court was abolished in 1640 ; but he is mis- taken, for in 1642, in sixteen days' sittings, the court made 656 orders. It passed away in the turmoils of the civil war. The jealousy of the common law courts toward the chan- cery culminated in Henry VIII.'s Statute of Uses, which
 * 3 Com. 50.