Editing High Court of Chivalry (section)

==History==
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[[File:Microcosm of London Plate 043 - Heralds' College.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A session of the Court of Chivalry being held in the [[College of Arms]], depicted in 1809.]]

The court was historically known as the ''Curia Militaris'', the ''Court of the Constable and the Marshal'', or the ''Earl Marshal's Court''.<ref>G. D. Squibb, ''The High Court of Chivalry: A Study of the Civil Law in England'', Oxford, 1959, pp.2–3; [http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/lexarm.html The Law of Arms in Mediaeval England]</ref> The court was established some time prior to the late fourteenth century with jurisdiction over certain military matters, which came to include misuse of arms. It was instituted by Edward III, along with the Earl and other key personnel.

Since it was created in the fourteenth century, the court has always sat when required, except for the short time between 1634 and its temporary abolition by the [[Long_Parliament|Long Parliament in 1640]] when it sat on a regular basis. During this time, the court heard well over a thousand cases, of which evidence survives from 738 cases.<ref name="UOB001">{{cite web |url=http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/history/research/projects/court-of-chivalry/seventeenth-century/index.aspx |title=The High Court of Chivalry in the early seventeenth century |website=birmingham.ac.uk |publisher=University of Birmingham | access-date=6 October 2016}}</ref>

Its jurisdiction and powers were successively reduced by the common law courts to the point where, after 1737, the court ceased to be convened and was in time regarded as obsolete and no longer in existence. That understanding was authoritatively overturned, however, by a revival of the court in 1954, when the Earl Marshal appointed the then Lord Chief Justice to sit as his surrogate. The Lord Chief Justice Lord Goddard confirmed that the court retained both its existence and its powers, and ruled in favour of the suit before him.