Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 38

Chapter 30 regulated the new system of nisi prius justices, who become more important in practice as a result of many succeeding statutes amending the system in details. In this way it became less necessary for juries from remote parts of the country to undertake the slow and costly journey to Westminster.

In the same year the Statute of Winchester established a system of police by compelling citizens to possess armour according to their means for the defence of the peace. Then the Statute of Merchants (also of 1285) established a system of recording debts and of making land liable to execution, which lasted down to the eighteenth century with some modifications.¹ In 1290 we find the great Statute Quia Emptores which has been rightly called one of the pillars of real property law.

The burden of foreign war and the Crown’s growing need for money provoked a good deal of unrest, and finally, as the price of a heavy grant of taxes, the King had to confirm the Charters. It was on this occasion (1297) that the Great Charter was first enrolled among the public archives.