Procedural Innovation and Institutional Change in Medieval English Manorial Courts

Abstract

In England during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the royal courts cast a longer and longer shadow over private and local jurisdictions. By a series of steps embracing much innovation, the custom of the king's court gradually became the common law of England, and the royal courts asserted their supremacy over other jurisdictions in many areas. Foremost among these were disputes over freehold land and cases involving felonies. It has been suggested that the royal innovations’ jurisdictional effects on private courts were “neither intended nor foreseen.” Nonetheless, they reduced private jurisdictions—with the exception of the palatinates—to constitutional insignificance during the thirteenth century. Occasional baronial objections, such as that enshrined in clause thirty-four of Magna Carta or the bluff waving of a rusty sword at a quo warranto inquest do not disguise this basic fact of English legal and constitutional history.