Editing Court of Chancery (section)

=== Competition with the common law ===
[[File:Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley from NPG.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Painting of a pale man with a pointed grey beard, in black Elizabethan dress, with a large white ruff and black hat. He is holding some papers in his left hand and a glove in his right. There is a red cloth bag with the royal coat of arms beside his right hand, in the foreground of the picture.|[[Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley|Lord Ellesmere]], who worked to maintain the Chancery's ability to override the common law courts as lord chancellor]]

The early [[Elizabethan period]] featured a dispute between the Court of Chancery and common-law courts over who held pre-eminence. It had been the practice under [[Henry VI of England|Henry VI]] that plaintiffs in the common-law courts could not execute judgments given by the common-law judges if the lord chancellor felt their claim was "against conscience". This had been vehemently opposed by the common-law judges, who felt that if the lord chancellor had the power to override their decisions, parties to a case would flock to the Court of Chancery.<ref>Kerly (1890) p.107</ref> The dispute over the pre-eminence of the lord chancellor continued into [[Elizabeth I]]'s reign, with the judges increasing in strength; the lord chancellor was no longer a clergyman whom it was risky to offend, while the judges had grown in stature.<ref>Kerly (1890) p.108</ref> [[Sir Edward Coke]] cites in his ''Reports'' a case at the end of Elizabeth I's reign which seems to indicate that the chancellor's prerogative had been overturned, when the judges (without opposition from the monarch) allowed a claim to proceed despite the lord chancellor's implied jurisdiction. At the same time, the common-law judges ruled that the Chancery had no jurisdiction over matters of [[Freehold (English law)|freehold]].<ref>Kerly (1890) p. 109</ref>

The lord chancellor of the time, [[Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley|Lord Ellesmere]], was not dissuaded, and maintained that he had the jurisdiction to oversee decisions of the common-law courts and matters of freehold. In 1614, he heard the case of ''Courtney v. Glanvil'', dictating that Glanvil should be imprisoned for deceit; this was over-ruled by Sir Edward Coke in the [[Court of King's Bench (England)|Court of King's Bench]], who demanded that Glanvil be released and issued a writ of ''[[habeas corpus]]''.<ref>Kerly (1890) p. 110</ref> Two years later, the ''[[Earl of Oxford's Case]]'' came before Ellesmere, who issued a judgment that directly contradicted English law based on the "Law of God".<ref>Kerly (1890) p. 111</ref> Coke and the other judges over-ruled this judgment while Ellesmere was ill, taking the case as an opportunity to completely overthrow the lord chancellor's jurisdiction.<ref name=kerlrev1/> Ellesmere appealed to the Monarch, who referred the matter to the [[Law Officers of the Crown#Other persons|attorney general for the prince of Wales]] and [[Francis Bacon]], the [[Attorney General for England and Wales]].<ref name=kerlrev1/> Both recommended a judgment in Ellesmere's favour, which the Monarch made, saying:

<blockquote>as mercy and justice be the true supports of our Royal Throne; and it properly belongeth to our princely office to take care and provide that our subjects have equal and indifferent justice ministered to them; and that when their case deserveth to be relieved in course of equity by suit in our Court of Chancery, they should not be abandoned and exposed to perish under the rigor and extremity of our laws, we&nbsp;... do approve, ratifie and confirm, as well the practice of our Court of Chancery.<ref name=kerlrev1>Kerly (1890) p. 114</ref></blockquote>

Coke's challenge to the Chancery is seen by academic Duncan Kerly as helping him lose his position as a judge, and until its dissolution the Court of Chancery could overrule judgments issued in the common-law courts.<ref name=kerlrev2/> This was not the end of the dispute, however; in his ''[[Institutes of the Lawes of England]]'', Coke suggested that the Monarch's decree was unlawful, and his contemporary [[David Jenkins (Royalist)|David Jenkins]] wrote in ''Eight Centuries of Reports'' that "the excess of Jurisdiction in Chancery, in examining Judgments at Common Law" was one of the largest abuses of the law. In the late 17th century [[Robert Atkyns (judge)|Robert Atkyns]] attempted to renew this controversy in his book ''An Enquiry into the Jurisdiction of the Chancery in Causes of Equity'', but without any tangible result.<ref name=kerlrev2>Kerly (1890) p. 115</ref> Even so, future lord chancellors were more cautious; when Francis Bacon succeeded Ellesmere, he made sure to prevent the misuse of injunctions.<ref>Kerly (1890) p. 116</ref> Horowitz writes that this was not just limited to Bacon, and that "after the dramatic confrontations between Lord Chief Justice Coke and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, chancellors took care to circumscribe the Court's corrective jurisdiction and to focus more narrowly on territories they had staked out as peculiarly their own".<ref>Horowitz (1996) p. 25</ref>