The Court of Star Chamber. and thus came about in the twelfth century the establishment of justices in eyre, who under the king's writ, in the nature of a commis sion, went in circuits and held courts throughout England, endowed with all the power and authority of the curia regis and its exchequer branch, save the reservation of final appeal thereto.1 Not long after this a court made its ap pearance under the name of bancum or bench, as distinguished from the curia regis. This court, like the justice in eyre, was erected in aid of the curia regis, and the latter ceased to entertain common pleas about the time when the bancum or bench made its appearance. The existence of the bench and of the justiciarii de banco appear from the records of the reign of Richard I. The bench took charge of the common pleas, thus leaving only matters of great concern, not cognizable at common law, for the curia regis. After the erection of the bancum or bench the style of the supreme tribunal began to alter, and the proceedings there were fre quently said to be coram rege, or coram domino rege; and in subsequent times the court was styled curia regis coram ipso rege, or coram noblis, or coram domino rege ubicunque fuerit, etc. However it was still called aula regis, curia regis, curia nostra and curia magna. The exchequer being a member of the curia regis and a place for determining the ' It is not easy to determine the exact period when this establishment of justices itinerant was first made. It was long the common opinion that they were originally ap pointed in the great council held at Nottingham, or as some say,at Northampton, in the 22d of Henry II., 1176; but it has been proved from the records in the exchequer that there had been justices itinerant to hear and determine civil and criminal causes in the 18th Henry I., and likewise justices in eyre for the pleas of the forest. It is probable that the first appointment ofjustice itinerant was made by Henry I. in imitation of a like institution in France, introduced by Louis le Gros, that in the reign of King Stephen the new system was dropped and was again revived by Henry II., during the greater part of whose reign pleas were held in the counties by the justice itiner ant from year to year, and who at length fixed the system as a part of the legal constitution of the realm.
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same sort of common pleas as had been brought in that court, the separation of such pleas from the latter considerably affected the exchequer. The clause in King John's charter equally concerned both : curia nostram meant the exchequer as well as the court properly so called. Thus the great sovereign court of the Saxons, preserved by the Normans, and of supreme power and influence over the entire kingdom for many generations, having found itself unable to deal with all the causes within its cognizance, had distributed its jurisdiction by sending forth the new estab lishment of justices itinerant and justices of the bench, and then, except for judicial emergencies unprovided for by the estab lished law, its functions became unnecessary and its ancient supreme authority ceased to be of general need. It had thrown off the three courts of common law, the coram ipso rege, since called the King's Bench, the bench, subsequently known as Common Pleas, and the modern Court of Exchequer. But while provision had been made for the transaction of all judicial business for which a legal remedy existed at the common law, no tribunal had as yet been created with power to adjudicate matters in respect to which the common law was deficient, or offered no relief. In the thirteenth century jurisdiction over civil matters of this character was conferred upon the Court of Chancery. With respect to the origin of the judicial power possessed by the Lord Chancellor and from which the great Court of Chancery resulted — it is the opinion of Lombard that he had no jurisdiction for the hearing and determining of civil causes till the reign of King Edward I., when, the power of the justiciarius Anglice declining, it being re strained ad placita coram rege tenenda, the king committed to his chancellor, together with the trust and charge of his great seal, his own royal and extraordinary pre-eminence of jurisdiction in such civil causes, as well
