ined from the
practice, too common before him, of interrupting justice by mandates
from the privy-council;[***] repressed robberies and Edward enacted a
law to this purpose; but it is doubtful whether he ever observed it. We
are sure that scarcely any of his successors did.

* Institute, p. 156.

** History of the English Law, p. 158, 163.

*** Articuli super Cart. cap. 6., Letters of protection were
the ground of a complaint by the commons in 3, Edward (See
Ryley, p. 525.) This practice is declared illegal.

The multitude of these disorders[*] encouraged trade, by giving
merchants an easy method of recovering their debts;[**] and, in
short, introduced a new face of things by the vigor and wisdom of his
administration. As law began now to be well established, the abuse
of that blessing began also to be remarked. Instead of their former
associations for robbery and violence, men entered into formal
combinations to support each other in lawsuits, and it was found
requisite to check this iniquity by act of parliament.[***]

There happened in this reign a considerable alteration in the execution
of the laws: the king abolished the office of chief justiciary,
which, he thought, possessed too much power, and was dangerous to the
crown;[****] he completed the division of the court of exchequer into
four distinct courts, which managed each its several branch, without
dependence on any one magistrate; and as the lawyers afterwards invented
a method, by means of their fictions, of carrying business from one
court to another, the several courts became rivals and checks to each
other; a circumstance which tended much to improve the practice of the
law in England.

* Statute of Winton.

** Statute of Acton Burnel

*** Statute of Conspirators.

**** Spel. Gloss, in verbo Justiciarius.

Gilbert's History of the Exchequer, p. 8: not bound to it by
his tenure; his visible reluctance to confirm the Great
Charter, as if that concession had no validity from the
deeds of his predecessors; the captious clause which he at
last annexed to his confirmation; his procuring of the
pope's dispensation from the oaths which he had taken to
observe that charter; and his levying of talliages at
discretion even after the statute, or rather charter, by
which he had renounced that prerogative; these are so many
demonstrations of his arbitrary dispo