The Elizabethan Court of Chancery

Out of Print

Preface
This book is the product of work begun twelve years ago when Sir John Neale first introduced me to Chancery and thus to Egerton. It bears some resemblance to my Ph.D. thesis presented to the University of London in 1958 but it is in no way that thesis simply prepared for publication.

It consists of three studies, each of which has something of a separate identity but all of which evolve from the equity court. Throughout, I have concentrated on the reign of Elizabeth. Not all Jacobean problems have been avoided, but as far as possible I have tried to exclude events which occurred during the first Stuart's reign, since in the history of legal institutions, unlike that of general politics, they have too often been allowed to colour our understanding of the sixteenth century.

Furthermore, our appreciation of events in the reign of James is sometimes overlaid by preceived assumptions, and I believe that we shall never obtain a proper story until there is a picture of each legal tribunal as it existed and worked prior to his accession.

There is much to learn: our knowledge of the way in which a court tried to get at the facts is often superior to our appreciation of the lawyers and clerks who conducted this process; we know more about legal procedures than about the ways in which substantive law developed; research done on courts operating by procedure of English bill outranks that done on courts which worked on common law procedures.

These have been some of the limitations upon the author, and they are sometimes apparent in the terminology employed. I have often referred to common law courts as being distinct entities, but when Lord Chancellors used this phrase in the sixteenth century they were not making quite thee same distinction as appeared to later minds .

This book is much concerned with legal history, but it is by no means a legal work. Law is the administration of justice, and my interests have centred upon administration rather than upon justice save in so far as the one complements, and is part of the other. The equity court of Chancery, conceived as an institutional phenomenon, was part of administration, just one segment of th governmental framework of Elizabethan England...
W.J. Jones