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 The English Law Courts.

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THE ENGLISH LAW COURTS.

THE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION. THE judicial functions of the Anglo- with matters relating to the royal revenue; Saxon monarchs were of a twofold although it afterwards by a legal fiction ac nature — the ordinary authority which the quired a jurisdiction in private suits, and Ki.ng exercised, like the inferior territorial had also an equity jurisdiction of its own, which was for the judges, differing per most part abolished haps in degree and transferred to the though the same in Court of Chancery kind, and resulting from the peculiar by 5 Vict. c. 5. The Court of Common and immediate rela tion of the vassal to Pleas had peculiar cognizance of suits his superior; and the prerogative suprem between private per sons {com m u n ia acy pervading all the tribunals of the peo placita). It was at ple, and which was to first itinerant — (we shall notice this as be called into action when they were un pect of its history able or unwilling to more particularly in dealing with the as afford redress. (Palgrave, 1 Eng. Com sizes in a subsequent mon, 282.) With the paper) — in charac Norman conquest an ter, but the famous important change article in Magna was effected. The C h a r t a, communia office of King's Chief placita 11011 scquanlur Justiciar was intro curiam nostram sed THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND duced, and a gradual in aliquo loco certo tencentralization of judical power was ef cautur, gave it a settled habitation and a name. The certain place fixed upon was fected by the establishment of the aula re gis, or supreme council of the sovereign. Westminster. The aula regis, already weak From this supreme council were derived the ened by the definitive establishment of the Courts of Exchequer, Common Pleas and Courts of Exchequer and Common Pleas, King's Bench — whose several jurisdictions and in the time of Henry III, by the se cession of the chancellor, in the time of are now merged in the Queen's Bench Di vision. These three courts were, originally Edward I had its authority revived by the in the nature of committees delegated by erection of the Court of King's Bench, " an the sovereign for the despatch of specific ciently called curia doinini regis because branches of the business of his court, but oftentimes the King sat here in person, and soon assumed an independent existence. had his justices a latere suo resideiites" The Court of Exchequer dealt principally (Dugdale, Orig. Jurid. c. 17, p. 38), a