Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 154

We have already noticed the growth of the Exchequer of Plea, and its pretensions to become more than a purely revenue court.² During the middle ages it seems to have held common pleas from time to times but certainly not in any great number. During the sixteenth century it is said to have claimed a general jurisdiction over many sorts of common pleas by means of the fiction that one of the parties was a Crown debtor,³ and this claim was admitted. For a long time the judges of the court (technically called Barons¹) had been lawyers (although not necessarily serjeants). The history of this has never been explored, but it is clear that, by means unknown, the barons of the exchequer steadily raised their position until, in 1579, Queen Elizabeth, in making a new appointment, expressly gave the new baron an equal status with the judges of the other common law courts, and for the future the barons of the Exchequer shared with the justices of the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas the duties of going on circuit. Henceforth there were to be three common law courts of first instance.