Willis: Anglo-American Law 
113 
had been invented in the Strict Period. There was practi- 
cally no development in common law remedies, except that 
general assumpsit became available for implied promises and 
special assumpsit for bilateral agreements, and case was still 
further extended to furnish remedies for two or three new 
torts. 
Courts. This period was marked, not by the creation of new 
courts, but by the abolition of old. The Court of Star Cham- 
ber was abolished in 1641, and the High Commission Court 
and some of the courts established in the reign of Henry VIII 
soon followed it into oblivion. These courts had become in- 
struments of oppression and injustice, and their abolition was 
one of the chief accomplishments of the Period of Equity. 
Legal Procedure. Because of evasions of Magna Charta 
and the writ of habeas corpus, a new Habeas Corpus Act 
was passed in 1679, making it a crime to imprison a person 
in Scotland or beyond the seas (where he could not be found 
and a writ would not lie), providing for bail, for application 
for writ in vacation to chancellor or any judge, and for pun- 
ishment of gaolor for violation of the writ, and providing 
that if a person was not brought to trial at the next sitting 
he was to be given his liberty (with certain exceptions) and 
not again imprisoned. Because of the especial harshness of 
criminal procedure in cases of treason there was passed in 
the reign of William and Mary (1695) an act which gave the 
accused the right to a copy of the indictment five days before 
trial, a copy of the panel of jurors two days before trial, 
the right to take advice and make his defense by counsel, the 
right to have his witnesses examined on oath, the right to 
have the two witnesses (already required) testify to the same 
overt act of treason, or to different acts of the same treason, 
and the right in the trial of a peer or peeress to have sum- 
mons sent to every peer. Some development in the law of 
evidence occurred in this period. In this period were devel- 
oped the parol evidence rule, the character rule, the best evi- 
dence rule, the privilege against self-crimination, and the rule 
as to two witnesses in treason. Cross-examination took the 
place of torture, altho I suppose the witnesses thought that 
cross-examination was only another form of torture. An act 
was passed in 1697-1698 making reference to arbitration a 
rule of court- 
8 — 36'104 
