Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 91

In early times there seems to have been no limit to the jurisdiction of the county court; civil and criminal cases, pleas common and royal, were alike within its power. The Crown (and apparently the public also) so thoroughly distrusted the sheriffs, however, that constant reductions of their jurisdiction were made. Henry II’s criminal reforms were briefly confirmed by Magna Carta¹ which removed pleas of the Crown from the sheriff (and the county). When later on it was found that criminal justice would have to be decentralised, it is significant that the old powers of the sheriff were not restored to him, but a new jurisdiction was set up in the justices of the peace. On the civil side another principle at least as old as Henry II made it unnecessary for a man to answer an action for land unless it was brought by the king’s writ.² The statute of Marlborough reserved all writs of false judgment for the king’s court³ and so the county was prevented from becoming a court of review over the lesser local jurisdictions. No trespass alleging contra pacem regis could be tried in the county, for it was technically a plea of the Crown;⁴ and no trespass, debt or detinue could be brought where more than forty shillings were involved—a rule which is stated in the reign of Edward I, although its origin is uncertain.⁵ It came to be held (as we have seen) that the suitors were still the judges, even in actions brought under a writ with the justicies clause, a collection of archaic rules and procedure had to be observed, with the result that justicies could not compete with another reform more in accordance with the trend of legal development—that is to say, the system of trials at nisi prius.⁶

The county was never a “court of record” in the eyes of the superior courts at Westminster,⁷ and its rolls (when rolls were kept) were not admissible in evidence on the same basis as “solemn” records; instead, when a plea was removed from the county to the Court of Common Pleas, four knights came up to Westminster and recounted what had happened—and on some occasions we even find them ready to wage battle by a champion in support of the truth of their unwritten “record”.¹