Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1st ed, 1768, vol III).djvu/64

 52 PRIVATE BOOK III. extended to other matters wholly determinable at the common law, upon falfe and fictitious fuggeitions ; for which therefore the chancellor himfelf is by ftatute 17 Ric. II. c. 6. directed to give damages to the parties unjuiHy aggrieved. But as the clergy, fo early as the reign of king Stephen, had attempted to turn their ecclefiaftical courts into courts of equity, by entertaining fuits pro laejione Jidei, as a fpiritual offence againfl confcience, in cafe of nonpayment of debts or any breach of civil contracts " ; till checked by the constitutions of Clarendon, which declared that " placita de debitis, quae Jide interpofita debentur, vel abj'que inter- " pojitione fidci, Jint in jujiicia regis :" therefore probably the ec- clefiaftical chancellors, who then held the feal, were remifs in abridging their own new-acquired jurifdiction ; efpecially as the fpiritual courts continued to grafp at the fame authority as before, in fuits pro laejione jldei, fo late as the fifteenth century p, till fi- nally prohibited by the unanimous concurrence of all the judges. However, it appears from the parliament rolls q, that in the reigns of Henry IV and V the commons were repeatedly urgent to have the writ of fubpoena intirely fupprefled, as being a novelty devifed by the fubtilty of chancellor Waltham, againft the form of the common law ; whereby no plea could be determined, un- lefs by examination and oath of the parties, according to the form of the law civil, and the law of holy church, in fubverfion of the common law. But though Henry IV, being then hardly warm in his throne, gave a palliating anfwer to their petitions, and actually paffed the ftatute 4 Hen. IV. c. 23. whereby judg- ments at law are declared irrevocable unlefs by attaint or writ of error, yet his fon put a negative at once upon their whole ap- plication : and in Edward IV's time, the procefs by bill and fubpoena was become the daily practice of the court r. n Lord Lyttelt. Hen. II. b. 3. p. 361. ^Hen.V. . 46. cited in Prynne's abr. of not. Cotton's records. 410.422.424.548. 4lnft. 10 Hen. II c. 15. 83. i Roll. Abr. 370, 37 I, 372. P Yearu. * Hen. 11'. lo. 1,% Hen. VI. 29. r Rot. Parl. i^Ectw. //'. /z. 33. (not i Rot. Parl. ifHat.iy. n. 78 fcf no. 1 4 Ed. HI. as cited j Roll. Abr. 370,^.) BUT