the reach of the common law, could be invoked by petition. The council by whom were examined the petitions of those who sought this extraordinary justice of the king was a large and not very definitely limited body, composed of the great officers of state, the judges of the courts at Westminster, and an indeterminate additional group of barons and ecclesiastics summoned by the king, apparently at his discretion. In the case of civil matters at least, the task of examination devolved in large measure on the learned chancellor; indeed, by Edward I's reign many of the petitions were addressed to the chancellor directly. Gradually, in the course of the next two reigns, the chancellor's control over this extraordinary justice became so special that his office was recognized as a separate court as well as a department of state. The petitions which he entertained sought relief in a wide variety of situations: in some such as cases of assault and battery and forcible dispossession of property-where, though the courts of law had jurisdiction, the wealth or power of the wrongdoer corrupted or intimidated a jury of his neighbors; in still others where the limitations, jurisdictional or procedural, of the courts of common law prevented the injured party from obtaining a remedy there. At first, then, the chancellor in large part merely administered the common law in the special cases which called for summary and powerfully sanctioned justice. But the very existence of this jurisdiction was a reflection on the courts of common law. The King's Bench claimed the right to forbid a resort to chancery if the case fell within the common law jurisdiction. Parliament, who saw in the chancellor the leading member of the King's Council, a body identified with the royal assertions of prerogative of which they were rightly jealous, at first joined hands with the older courts in opposition to interference by a royal officer with the regular course of justice. In the face of this hostility on the part of Parliament, the chancellor gradually abandoned the exercise of this supplementary jurisdiction, and it became a leading principle of the law developed in the court of chancery that where a remedy existed at common law the chancellor would not interfere. 60. The equitable jurisdiction of chancery.-But, as has been seen, the common law had not evolved remedies for every wrong, and it was to supplement this deficiency that chancery successfully developed its characteristic equity jurisdiction. The burdens of the feudal incidents of tenure had led to the devising during the thirteenth century of a scheme for avoiding them by conveying the land to a trustee, who agreed to hold the legal title for the benefit of some one appointed by the person making the conveyance. Under the rigid rules of the common law of land the trustee, being the holder of the legal title, was the absolute owner of the land. If he chose to disregard his promise, their writ process provided no remedy; for the obligation was a moral one, not enforcible in act of law. The chancellor, however, was willing to lend the aid of his court and its special process to the enforcement of the promise or trust.24 His reason for assuming this jurisdiction was probably not only because it was one in which the common law afforded no remedy, but also because it was one involving the prevention of a breach of good faith-a matter in which as an ecclesiastic he had both a moral and a legal interest, since the chancery courts had always sought, though with but limited success, to exercise jurisdiction over pledges of faith as matters spiritual. It was this insistence on the performance of a moral duty with which the courts of common law confessed themselves unable to deal under the rules governing their action, that gave to the court of chancery its name of a court of equity. The same reasons prevailed upon the chancellors to interfere in other cases where the law in enforcing a strict legal right was really defeating the ends of justice. Cases where duress, fraud, accident, or mistake had given one party an advantage over the other which it was unconscionable to exercise, were cared for inadequately or not at all under the rules of common law. Thus where a man had given a bond to secure a debt, and had paid the debt but had failed to obtain a release of the bond, the holder of the bond could still sue and enforce it at law. In this and similar cases the chancellor gave relief by preventing the suit at law and ordering the cancellation of the bond. In time the relief granted at first in special cases where the common law rule was inadequate became a usual form in which the chancellor's equitable powers were exercised, and 24 See subject, TRUSTS. the field of his jurisdiction came to be conceived, though somewhat vaguely, as the compelling of conduct in accord with what good conscience would require: the enforcement of moral duties by the power of the state. 61. Chancery procedure. The chancellor's jurisdiction was derived from the king's power to do justice. Hence he was not tied down, as the courts of common law deemed themselves to be, by any inflexible rules of procedure. But the nature of the cases presented to him, the summary justice which they usually called for, naturally suggested to a cleric, as the chancellor was, the summary process which the church courts administering the canon law used in dealing with heretics. Upon considering the petition or bill, as it was called, which invoked his justice, the chancellor issued the famous subpoena, which required the person complained of to appear before him in person to answer the bill, on pain (sub poena) of forfeiting a hundred pounds. When the defendant appeared, the chancellor himself examined him under oath, and without giving him a jury trial. Thus the chancellor was not hampered by the rules of practice, pleading, and evidence which the system of a jury trial had imposed upon the common law courts; and though in time equity procedure became as intricate and technical as that at common law, it was at first eminently flexible and expeditious. Thus, for example, the common law could not deal with cases involving more than two sets of parties. It could not supervise the management of a busi ness nor adequately direct the taking of complicated All this the freer chancery procedure accounts. Probably the most important superiority of the procedure the chancellor introduced was in the relief he could award to the successful plaintiff. A common law judgment was an exceptionally rigid thing. It had to be absolute in terms; it could not be made conditional on the performance of some future act. With one exception it was a remedy by way of money compensation for the wrong done the petitioner. The common law could put one who had been wrongfully turned out from his land back into possession, but beyond that practically its only remedy was a judgment for money damages which could be enforced against the property of the defendant. But chancery as a court of conscience, with its attention directed primarily to the duty of the defendant, vindicated the right of the plaintiff through compelling the defendant to fulfill specifically his correlative duty. It ordered him to do the very act he was under moral obligation to do, or to refrain from the very act he was under obligation not to do; furthermore, if he were recalcitrant it threw him into prison and kept him there until he was ready to perform his duty in accordance with the chancellor's decree. Equity or chancery could not only redress injuries which had already occurred: by means of its characteristic weapon, the injunction, it could prevent threatened injuries, and by its decree of "specific performance" secure to the plaintiff a relief often |