1828.] The Court of Chancery. 565 



trenching upon the more peculiar province of the common law judges. 

 These encroachments were the long and frequent subjects even of par- 

 liamentary remonstrance ; and to affix a limit to the jurisdiction, was a 

 part of Bacon's project of reform, " equity," as he said, " being made to 

 supply, and not to subvert, the law/' The fact was, the importance of 

 the office for a long time very much depended upon the personal cha- 

 racter and ambition of the individual who filled it. During the chan- 

 cellorship of Lord Somers, Sir Robert Atkins, a lawyer of high reputa- 

 tion, in his " Inquiry into the Jurisdiction of the Chancellor in causes of 

 Equity/' pronounces this branch of the chancellor's office an usurpation, 

 " not only not founded upon any good authority, but carried on by the 

 potency and greatness of the chancellor." And Sir E. Coke declares, 

 " The Court of Equity increased most of all, when Cardinal Wolsey 

 was lord chancellor of England." Indeed Wolsey took a very effectual 

 way of snatching the jurisdiction of the common law altogether out of 

 the hands of the judges, for it formed one of the articles of his impeach- 

 ment. " Also, when matters have been near at judgment by process at 

 your common lawe, the same lord cardinal hath not onely given and sent 

 injunctions to the parties, but also sent for your judges, expressly by 

 threats commanding them to defer the judgment, to the evident subversion 

 of your lawes, if the judges would so have ceased." (p. 62). Blackstone 

 attributes to Lord Nottingham the subsequent reduction of equity into a 

 system, built upon what he calls " wide and rational foundations which 

 have also," he goes on to add, " been extended and improved by many 

 great men, who have since presided in Chancery. And from that time to 

 this, the powers and business of the court have increased to an amazing 

 degree/' (p. 211). The increase of business will readily be compre- 

 hended the " wide and rational " foundations, we trust, will not be 

 taken upon the bare ipse dixit of the great apologist of English law. 

 The supervision of the common law may be considered the remedial 

 jurisdiction of the court a species of jurisdiction which it shares with 

 several foreign codes. It is stated, in a clear and able sketch, furnished 

 by Mr. Henry * to the Commissioners on Criminal and Civil Justice, in the 

 West Indies Report (Jamaica), p. 101, that in all those courts which are 

 founded on the Roman law, and particularly in those of the Dutch ceded 

 colonies, this species of relief " is divided into two kinds, sovereign and 

 judicial;" the former, afforded by the sovereign or his delegate, being ap- 

 plied only " to those cases in which otherwise the party would be stopped 

 by his own act from making any defence, though made under circum- 

 stances which would render it unjust to enforce the claim at common law :" 

 the latter, administered by the judge himself, is "chiefly a relief against 

 errors, or slips in pleadings, or defaults, and is generally granted upon 

 terms so as not to prejudice the other party." Extensive, however, as is 

 this remedial branch of its jurisdiction to the English Court of Equity, 

 its original jurisdiction occupies a far wider field ; embracing not only 

 those cases which, being anciently reserved to the more immediate judg- 

 ment of the crown, were never delegated at all to the courts of common 

 law, but those, in which neither the latter, nor the other tribunals of 

 justice, afford a remedy ; and, those which statutory enactment have at 

 various time added to it. The abolition of the Court of Wards cast 



* Senior Commissioner of Legal Inquiry into the Administration of Justice in the 

 West Indian and South American Colonies, to whom the public are indebted for the 

 recent translation (by order of Lord Bathurst) of Van der Linden's " Institutes of the 

 Laws of Holland." 



