5 - Chancery Suits
from II - Select Cases
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Summary
As stated previously, the Court of Chancery, although a royal court, was not a common law court. It was the court of conscience, where a plaintiff was allowed to describe his case in detail and to request that it be considered according to standards inadmissible at common law. The following example shows that this aim was taken seriously.
In 1468, a subpoena was sued in the Chancery for the breach of a parol [verbal] promise. The defendant argued that the plaintiff's only remedy lay in the Church courts. The Chancellor [the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert Stillington] was short with him. “You say that for breach of faith he must sue by the Canon Law; but in this case, because he is damaged by the non-performance of the promise, he shall have a remedy here.” The defendant persisted that, had the plaintiff taken the trouble to obtain the defendant's promise under seal, he could have sued in Covenant [by writ in a common law court], and that it was “his folly not to have a deed.” But the Chancellor dismissed the suggestion with the beneficent, if uncomplimentary maxim, Deus est procurator fatuorum.
An uncomplimentary maxim to be sure, but not quite the scathing indictment that it might seem. Robert Stillington, chancellor from 1467 to 1470, held a doctorate in civil law from Oxford, and unlike some of his predecessors he took a real interest in procedural law. Therefore, by both training and inclination, he was acutely aware of the challenges facing every fifteenth-century litigant in the courts of the Crown.
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- Information
- English Nuns and the Law in the Middle AgesCloistered Nuns and their Lawyers, 1293–1540, pp. 101 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012