Note (Back) — Chapter I

17. The Courts of Law.—Three things resulted. In the first place, the Permanent Council acquired, in practice, complete detachment from the older and larger body. In the second place, to facilitate the accomplishment of its work there were introduced into it trained lawyers, expert financiers, and men of other sorts of special aptitudes—men, often, who in rank were but commoners. Finally, there split off from the body a succession of committees, to each of which was assigned a particular branch of administrative or judicial business. In this manner arose the four great courts of law: (1) the Court of Exchequer, to which was consigned jurisdiction over all fiscal causes in which the crown was directly concerned; (2) the Court of Common Pleas, with jurisdiction over civil cases between subject and subject; (3) the Court of King's Bench, presided over nominally by the king himself and taking cognizance of a variety of cases for which other provision was not made; and (4) the Court of Chancery, which, under the presidency of the Chancellor, heard and decided cases involving the principles of equity. The differentiation of these tribunals, beginning in the early twelfth century, was completed by the middle of the fourteenth. Technically, all were co-ordinate courts, from which appeal lay to the King in Council; and of the judicial prerogative which the Council as a whole thus retained there are still, as will be pointed out, certain survivals. By the time of Henry VI. (1422-1461) the enlargement of membership and the specialization of functions of the Permanent Council had progressed so far that the Council had ceased entirely to be a working unit. In the end what happened was that, precisely as the Permanent Council had been derived by selection from the original Great Council, so from the overgrown Permanent Council was constituted, in the fifteenth century, a smaller and more compact administrative body to which was assigned the designation of "Privy Council."[17]