e essential opposition between law and equity, and of the natural
superiority of the latter, remained long after equity had ceased to
found itself on natural justice, and had become as fixed and rigid as
the common law itself. The jealousy of the common lawyers came to a head
in the time of Lord Ellesmere, when Coke disputed the right of the
chancery to give relief against a judgment of the court of queen's bench
obtained by gross fraud and imposition. James I., after consultation,
decided in favour of the court of equity. The substitution of lay for
clerical chancellors is regarded by G. Spence (_Equitable Jurisdiction
of the Court of Chancery_, 2 vols., 1846-1849) as having at first been
unfortunate, inasmuch as the laymen were ignorant of the principles on
which their predecessors had acted. Lord Nottingham (1621-1682) is
usually credited with the first attempt to reduce the decisions of the
court to order, and his work was continued by Lord Hardwicke
(1690-1764). By the time of Lord Eldon equity had become fixed, and the
judges, like their brethren in the common law courts, strictly followed
the precedents. Henceforward chancery and common law courts have
exhibited the anomaly of two co-ordinate sets of tribunals, empowered to
deal with the same matters, and compelled to proceed in many cases on
wholly different principles. The court of chancery could in most cases
prevent a person from taking advantage of a common law right, not
approved of by its own system. But if a suitor chose to go to a court of
common law, he might claim such unjust rights, and it required the
special intervention of the court of equity to prevent his enforcing
them. In many cases also a special application had to be made to
chancery for facilities which were absolutely necessary to the
successful conduct of a case at common law. Another source of difficulty
and annoyance was the uncertainty in many cases whether the chancery or
common law courts were the proper tribunal, so that a suitor often found
at the close of an expensive and protracted suit that he had mistaken
his court and must go elsewhere for relief. Attempts more or less
successful were made to lessen those evils by giving the powers to both
sets of courts; but down to the consolidation effected by the Judicature
Act, the English judicial system justified the sarcasm of Lord Westbury,
that one tribunal was set up to do injustice and another to stop it.

The equitable jurisdiction