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ferior courts, of the Law Merchant, and--last, not least--of the Church. Fidel laesio. Popular custom, in all European countries, recognized simpler ways of pledging faith than parchment and seal. A handshake was enough to bind a bargain. Whatever secular law might say, the Church said it was an open sin to break plighted faith; a matter, therefore, for spiritual correction, in other words, for compulsion exercised on the defaulter by the bishop's or the archdeacon's court, armed with the power of excommunication. In this way the ecclesiastical courts acquired much business which was, in fact, as secular as that of a modern county court, with the incident profits. Medieval courts lived by the suitors' fees. What were the king's judges to do? However high they put their claims in the course of the rivalry between Church and Crown, they could not effectually prohibit the bishop or his official from dealing with matters for which the king's court provided no remedy. Continental jurists had seen their way, starting from the Roman system as it was left by Justinian, to reduce its formalities to a vanishing quantity, and expand their jurisdiction to the full breadth of current usage. English judges could not do this in the 15th century, if they could ever have done so. Nor would simplification of the requisites of a deed, such as has now been introduced in many jurisdictions, have been of much use at a time when only a minority even of well-to-do laymen could write with any facility. There was no principle and no form of action in English law which recognized any general duty of keeping promises. But could not breach of faith by which a party had suffered be treated as some kind of legal wrong? There was a known action of trespass and a known action of deceit, this last of a special kind, mostly for what would now be called abuse of the process of the court; but in the later middle ages it was an admitted remedy for giving a false warranty on a sale of goods. Also there was room for actions "on the case," on facts analogous to those covered by the old writs, though not precisely within their terms. If the king's judges were to capture this important branch of business from the clerical hands which threatened to engross it, the only way was to devise some new form of action on the case. There were signs, moreover, that the court of chancery would not neglect so promising a field if the common law judges left it open.
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