Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

usurpation of liberties, and petitions to the king for the restoration of franchises which the sheriffs were overriding could no ...

coram regeaccording to the record, or before the king ‘in parliament at Windsor’ according to the chronicler Thomas Wykes; while ...

justiciar’s eyre, were no doubt among the sources of the provisions finally promulgated at the Michaelmas parliament of 1259. Th ...

which Earl Simon summoned two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough, and which was consequently long regar ...

and his return in 1274, Edward I stated his intention to continue to hold parliaments at Easter and Michaelmas.^95 It is worth n ...

The ‘Mirror of Justices’, an anonymous work compiled towards 1290, called it ‘an abuse that, whereas parliaments ought to be hel ...

reformed and consolidated (status reformaretur et consolidaretur)’.^103 The modern translator of the Vita Edwardi Secundihas ‘co ...

Petitioning parliament for justice Others of the Ordinances of 1311 mentioning parliaments had a judicial rather than political ...

proceedings of which are recorded in the ‘Hundred Rolls’, five Essex townships independently presented the offence of a hundred ...

They are also mostly in French and differ from bills in eyre only in being more generally the plaints of tenants-in-chief, or in ...

What could be called ‘the bill revolution’ marked a second beginning for the English legal system. At the top, the new high cour ...

of the exchequer or to the chancellor for a remedy.^124 The judges in the lower court might be reluctant to give a decision, how ...

that they should go to chancery and purchase commissions for special justices to ‘hear and determine’ their plaints: Adeat Cance ...

Lichfield, instructing his chancellor and justices to employ ‘all the ways and means by which one can trouble the said bishop by ...

century commissions of the peace were issued with increasing frequency to a growing number of gentry in each shire, and the duty ...

were actually on behalf of private clients.^139 In the ‘good parliament’ four years later they brought the collective prosecutio ...

be another and longer debate in parliament de statu regni, during which the king replaced some of his previous statutes which ha ...

The clearest connection between ‘parliamentary’ petitioning for justice and the making of the first statutes appears in the chap ...

Increasing numbers of petitions were coming from local communities, e.g. ‘the poor and middling people of the county of Norfolk’ ...

confirmation of legal provisions going back to the Statute of Marl- borough and the baronial legislation of 1258–9.^152 By the e ...