em to me a probable
cause of the removal of suits from the county-court or court-baron to
those of Westminster. The true reason, as I have observed in another
place, was the partiality of these local tribunals. And the expense of
trying a suit before the justices in eyre might not be very much greater
than in the county-court.

I conceive, therefore, that the three supreme courts at Westminster
proceeded upon those rules of strict law which they had chiefly
themselves established; and this from the date of their separation from
the original _Curia Regis_. But whether the king's council may have
given more extensive remedies than the common law afforded, as early at
least as the reign of Henry III., is what we are not competent,
apparently, to affirm or deny. We are at present only concerned with
the Court of Chancery. And it will be interesting to quote the
deliberate opinion of a late distinguished writer, who has taken a
different view of the subject from any of his predecessors.

"After much deliberation," says Lord Campbell, "I must express my clear
conviction that the chancellor's equitable jurisdiction is as
indubitable and as ancient as his common-law jurisdiction, and that it
may be traced in a manner equally satisfactory. The silence of Bracton,
Glanvil, Fleta, and other early juridical writers, has been strongly
relied upon to disprove the equitable jurisdiction of the chancellor;
but they as little notice his common-law jurisdiction, most of them
writing during the subsistence of the _Aula Regia_; and they all speak
of the Chancery, not as a court, but merely as an office for the making
and sealing of writs. There are no very early decisions of the
chancellors on points of law any more than of equity, to be found in the
Year-books or old abridgments.... By 'equitable jurisdiction' must be
understood the extraordinary interference of the chancellor, without
common-law process or regard to the common-law rules of proceeding, upon
the petition of a party grieved who was without adequate remedy in a
court of common law; whereupon the opposite party was compelled to
appear and to be examined, either personally or upon written
interrogatories: and evidence being heard on both sides, without the
interposition of a jury, an order was made _secundum aequum et bonum_,
which was enforced by imprisonment. Such a jurisdiction had belonged to
the Aula Regia, and was long exercised by parliament; and, when
parliament was