Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/20

 to us show how the growth came about. The Justices in Eyre not uncommonly adjourn unfinished causes from one place in their circuit to another; and, when their journey is coming to an end, they adjourn causes sometimes, as they express it, to Westminster, sometimes 'into the Bench'. So far as can be ascertained, the two expressions mean the same thing.

A little later than the time we are now considering, 'the Bench' meant invariably, not, as might be supposed, at the King's Bench, but the Common Bench, otherwise known as the Court of Common Pleas. Accordingly when the records of the King's Court sitting at Westminster in the time of Richard I are examined, it is found that the actions which are brought into it are mostly of the same nature as those which would afterwards have been brought into the Court of Common Pleas. Some are causes brought into this court itself in the first instance, others are causes adjourned out of the Eyres. The Justices at Westminster, like the Justices in Eyre, are acting as the King's delegates, and their mode of procedure is the same. The records of the Courts, however, present some essential features of difference. The records of the Courts of the Eyre, when the Justices travelled with full jurisdiction, are largely made up of crown or criminal matters; the records of the Court at Westminster contain but few of such matters. In the records of the Eyre Courts the matters relating to each particular county are brought together; in the records of the Court at Westminster the matters relating to the various counties are intermixed, without any attempt at arrangement.

It is in this last fact that we see the central authority authority gaining ground. When the Eyre is in commission the central authority asserts itself in the counties by the appearance of the King's delegates. When the commission for the Eyre expires, the counties have to come to the Court at Westminster, or some other place, and there recognize the authority of the King's Justices.