as a model for succeeding judges, and hence he has been emphatically called " The Father of Equity." His immediate successors availed themselves very greatly of his profound learning and judgment. But a successor was still wanted, who should hold the seals for a period long enough to enable him to widen the foundation, and complete the structure, begun and planned by that illustrious man. Such a successor at length appeared in Lord Hardwicke; who presided in the Court of Chancery for twenty years; and his numerous decisions evince the most thorough learning, the most exquisite skill, and the most elegant juridical analysis. Few judges have left behind them a reputation more bright and enduring; few have had so favourable an opportunity of conferring lasting benefits upon the jurisprudence of their country; and still fewer have improved it by so large, so various, and so important contributions.

The Lord Chancellor has from the time of Henry VIII., had the assistance of the Master of the Rolls in administering justice according to the rules of equity. This great officer, who is now the custodier of the public records of the kingdom, was formerly the chief merely of the masters in chancery, who carried out the decrees and performed the ministerial functions of that court; Cardinal Wolsey having been, it is said, the first chancellor who devolved on the Master of the Rolls the exercise of a considerable branch of the equity jurisdiction of the court. In the course of the present century, however, the business of the Court so much increased, that it was found necessary to add considerably to its judicial power. In 1813 a vice-chancellor was appointed; and in 1841, two additional vice-chancellors; and a third was afterwards added. These several judges, the Master of the Rolls and vice-chancellors, heard and determined all matters pending in the Chancery; not as independent courts, but as representing the Lord Chancellor, or Court of Chancery itself; whose jurisdiction, both as a common law court and as a court of equity, has been merged in the High Court of Justice, and is exercised in the Chancery Division thereof.

This great court has also absorbed the Court of Admiralty, the Court of Probate, and the Court for Divorce and Matri

monial Causes. The several jurisdictions, thus transferred, are exercised in a divisional court, styled the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division.

The High Court of Admiralty had jurisdiction to determine all maritime injuries, arising upon the seas, or in parts out of the reach of the common law; and its proceedings were according to the method of the civil law, like those of the ecclesiastical courts. It was usually called the Instance Court, in contradistinction to a separate court called the Prize Court; which was constituted by a special commission, under the great seal, in time of war, to decide questions concerning booty of war. This jurisdiction exists by virtue of treaties with foreign nations; whereby particular courts are established in the maritime countries of Europe for the decision of the question, whether lawful prize or not: for this being a question between subjects of different states, it belongs entirely to the law of nations, and not to the municipal laws of either country, to determine it.

The Court of Probate was created in 1857, to exercise, in the name of the crown, all the jurisdiction and authority in relation to the granting or revoking probate of wills and letters of administration of the effects of deceased persons then vested in any court or person, with full authority to hear and determine all questions relating to matters and causes testamentary; it possessed the same powers throughout England as the Prerogative Court of the Archbishop of Canterbury previously had in that province; and was bound to perform all the duties which were imposed on or should be performed by ordinaries generally, or by the Prerogative Court, within their respective jurisdictions. It thus collected into itself all the authority of the local ecclesiastical courts in matters testamentary, whose duties indeed were principally administrative; for where the deceased left bona notabilia within two different dioceses, the jurisdiction belonged to the archbishop of the province, by way of special prerogative; from which, indeed, the court in which these causes were determined was called The Prerogative Court. The contentious jurisdiction is now either in the County Court or in the High Court.

The only other Court of original civil, as distinguished from

criminal jurisdiction, whose authority has been transferred to the High Court, is the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, created also in 1857, to exercise in the name of the Crown all the jurisdiction theretofore vested in any ecclesiastical court or person in matters matrimonial. What these matters matrimonial are I shall have occasion to explain hereafter.

VI. From each judge or Division of the High Court, as the case may be, an appeal lies to the Court of Appeal.

The appeal from the superior courts of common law was formerly to the Court of Exchequer Chamber, in which the judges of two of the Superior Courts of Common Law reviewed the decisions of the other court. The appeal from the Master of the Rolls and from the vice-chancellors was to the Court of Appeal in Chancery; which was either the Lord Chancellor, or the two Lords Justices of Appeal, or these three judges collectively. The appeal from the Court of Admiralty was to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, whose decision was final. From the Court of Probate the appeal was directly to the House of Lords. The appeal from the judge ordinary of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes was, in certain cases, to the full court, as it was termed, consisting of the Lord Chancellor, and certain other judges; in other cases there might be an appeal to the House of Lords.

These several appellate jurisdictions have been transferred to the Court of Appeal; which thus becomes also a court of intermediate appeal from the Courts of Probate and Divorce. For from the judgment of this Court, an appeal lies, in form, to

VII. The House of Lords; but in reality to judges designated Lords of Appeal, who need not be peers. They, therefore, constitute our supreme court of judicature, having no original jurisdiction over causes, but only upon appeal, to rectify any mistake in law, committed by the courts below. They thus exercise the authority to which the House of Peers succeeded upon the dissolution of the aula regis. For, as the barons of parliament were constituent members of that court and the rest of its jurisdiction was dealt out to other tribunals, the right of receiving appeals remained in the residue of that assembly, from which the other great courts were derived. This court is

therefore, in all causes the last resort, from whose judgment no further appeal is permitted; but every subordinate tribunal must conform to its determinations; since upon its decision all property must finally depend.

VIII. Before I conclude this chapter, I must also mention another species of courts, of general jurisdiction and use, which act as auxiliaries to, though each is in law a divisional court of the High Court of Justice, I mean, the courts of assize and nisi prius.

These are composed of two or more commissioners, who are twice, or oftener, in every year sent by special commission under the Great Seal all round the kingdom, except London and Middlesex, to try by a jury of the respective counties the truth of such matters of fact as are then under dispute in the various divisions of the High Court. They exercise their functions by virtue of five several authorities. 1. The commission of the peace. 2. A commission of oyer and terminer. 3. A commission of general gaol-delivery; the consideration of all which belongs properly to the subsequent book of these commentaries. 4. A commission of assize, directed to the justices, and others therein named, to take, together with their associates, assizes in the several counties; that is, to take the verdict of a peculiar species of jury, called an assize, which was formerly summoned for the trial of landed disputes, but which species of jury, by the abolition of real actions, no longer exists. 5. The other authority, that of nisi prius, is a consequence of the commission of assize, being annexed to the office of those justices by the statute 13 Edw. I. c. 30, and empowers them to try all questions of fact issuing out of the courts at Westminster. These by the ancient practice were to be tried at Westminister in some Easter or Michaelmas term, by a jury returned from the county wherein the cause of action arose; but with this proviso, nisi prius, unless before the day prefixed the judges of assize came into the county in question; which they were sure to do in the vacations preceding each Easter and Michaelmas term.

The function of these commissioners of assize and nisi prius being only to try issues of fact, all they had to do formerly was to return to the court above, that is, the Court at Westminster wherein the actions were pending, the findings of the jury on

the matters of fact submitted to them; whereupon the court above proceeded either to give judgment, or to hear the parties further on the question for whom judgment was to be given. These Courts of Nisi Prius were thus distinct tribunals, having their duties defined by the commissions under which they sat; but as every judge, and every commissioner of assize when engaged in the exercise of any jurisdiction assigned to him, is now deemed to constitute a divisional court of the High Court of Justice, he may at once, upon the finding of the jury, give judgment and award execution.

These are the several courts of public and general jurisdiction throughout the kingdom; but a portion of the judicial business of the country is done in certain special courts, the nature of which will be explained in the following chapter.

CHAPTER III.

OF COURTS OF A SPECIAL JURISDICTION.

Or those courts which have a special or peculiar jurisdiction, the first to be mentioned are those which take cognizance of injuries of an ecclesiastical nature.

In the time of our Saxon ancestors there was no distinction between the lay and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction: the county court was as much a spiritual as a temporal tribunal: the rights of the church were asserted at the same time, and by the same judges, as the rights of the laity. For this purpose the bishop of the diocese, and the sheriff of the county, sat together in the county court, and had there the cognizance of all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil: a superior deference being paid to the bishop's opinion in spiritual matters, and to that of the lay in temporal.

William the Conqueror, it is generally said, to please the clergy, by whom his claims had been warmly espoused, separated the ecclesiastical courts from the civil; and prohibited any spiritual cause from being tried in the secular courts, commanding the suitors to appear before the bishop only, whose decisions