Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 153

The Court of Exchequer

The Exchequer Chamber, 1585

The King’s Bench

Prerogative Writs

The Tudors and Local Courts

The Tudor Financial Courts

As the last chapter has shown, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were devoted to consolidating the monopoly enjoyed by the common law courts. In criminal justice alone did they allow developments to take place outside the system, and no doubt the reason was that the profession as a whole was not particularly interested in this arduous and unremunerative branch of law. The justices of the peace were therefore given a fairly free hand at the instance of the House of Commons, which seems to have felt in a dim sort of way that here was a field in which local self-government could be developed.¹

The next chapter will discuss the darker side of this picture, and the emergency measures which the prerogative courts resorted to in restoring tranquillity after the Wars of the Roses. But although (as that chapter will show) the great contribution of the Tudors lay in the field of prerogative courts, nevertheless they did carry out some notable reforms in the common law courts as well.