Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 143

The formulary system, which once had been a labour-saving device, developed into the system of forms of action which finally stunted and crippled the common law to such an extent that an entirely new system or prerogative courts of equity was needed. Even within the common law itself, the formulaic system was recognised as mischievous, for the common law courts began to compete with one another for business, piling fiction upon fiction in an endeavour to escape from the heavy burden of their history. Most strange of all, the common law courts found themselves champions of the popular cause against the Crown in the seventeenth century, although just a century before they had been loudly condemned by the public for their weakness, their slowness and their costliness.

The Restoration opened a long period of comparative quiescence during which the common law courts remained unchanged until the nineteenth century, thanks to the restoration of equity, which alone made tolerable so archaic a system.