Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-72csx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T07:25:06.226Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - ‘Travailing between the Prince and Petitioners’

The Court of Requests

from Part I - The New Justice System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2023

Laura Flannigan
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

By way of a firm case study for the new system of royal justice in action, Chapter 3 provides the first history of the Court of Requests from its initial entry in the historical records in 1483 through to its settlement at Westminster by the end of Henry VIII’s reign. The origin of this tribunal is located in the practice of receiving petitions during royal progresses, particularly in the reign of Richard III. Thereafter, Requests was part of the itinerant household, following Henry VII and Henry VIII as they travelled around their dominions. It only acquired a more defined timetable, judiciary, and seat at Westminster in the 1530s, when it became subject to ministerial reform programmes. Importantly, this evolution to courthood was neither smooth nor linear: its business levels peaked and troughed, it could seemingly always revert to acting on the road, and it was rarely referred to by the name ‘Court of Requests’. With these interpretive challenges in mind, this chapter argues that, contrary to administrative historians’ tendencies to identify positive development in improved bureaucracy, Requests’ flexibility and proximity to the king’s person was advantageous to petitioners.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×