The Superior Courts of Common Law

Abstract

This chapter traces the history of the superior courts of common law in Westminster Hall, after they emerged from the undifferentiated Curia Regis of the twelfth century. The most important was the Common Bench, the court for ‘common pleas’ which after 1234 was legally distinct from the court held before the king himself, the King’s Bench. A third court, the Exchequer, was meant for the king’s revenue business. By 1700 all three had become courts for common pleas, by making use of fictions: in the King’s Bench a fictional allegation of trespass in Middlesex (to put the defendant in gaol, with the aid of a writ of latitat), in the Exchequer a fictional allegation of debt to the Crown in a writ of quominus. These are explained. Such techniques did not escape controversy, and the process of jurisdictional conflict and assimilation is related.