cter,
an old term in English law for a form of homicide arising out of a
sudden affray or quarrel. The homicide has not the characteristic of
"malice prepense" which would raise the death to murder, nor the
completely accidental nature which would reduce it to homicide by
misadventure. It was practically identical, therefore, with
manslaughter.

CHANCERY, in English law, the court of the lord chancellor of England,
consolidated in 1873 along with the other superior courts in the Supreme
Court of Judicature. Its origin is noticed under the head of Chancellor.

It has been customary to say that the court of chancery consists of two
distinct tribunals--one a court of common law, the other a court of
equity. From the former have issued all the original writs passing under
the great seal, all commissions of sewers, lunacy, and the like--some of
these writs being originally kept in a _hanaper_ or hamper (whence the
"hanaper office"), and others in a little sack or bag (whence the
"petty-bag office"). The court had likewise power to hold pleas upon
_scire facias_ (q.v.) for repeal of letters patent, &c. "So little,"
says Blackstone, "is commonly done on the common law side of the court
that I have met with no traces of any writ of error being actually
brought since the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth."

The equitable jurisdiction of the court of chancery was founded on the
supposed superiority of conscience and equity over the strict law. The
appearance of equity in England is in harmony with the general course of
legal history in progressive societies. What is remarkable is that,
instead of being incorporated with or superseding the common law, it
gave rise to a wholly independent set of tribunals. The English dislike
of the civil law, and the tendency to follow precedent which has never
ceased to characterize English lawyers, account for this unfortunate
separation. The claims of equity in its earlier stages are well
expressed in the little treatise called _Doctor and Student_, published
in the reign of Henry VIII.:--"Conscience never resisteth the law nor
addeth to it, but only when the law is directly in itself against the
_law of God_, or _law of reason_." So also King James, speaking in the
Star Chamber, says: "Where the rigour of the law in many cases will undo
a subject, then the chancery tempers the law with equity, and so mixes
mercy with justice, as it preserves a man from destruction." This theory
of th