ng at the
same time administrative, judicial, and financial, and the mass of
business to which it was required to give attention was increasingly
great.

*17. The Courts of Law.*--Three things resulted. In the first place, the
Permanent Council acquired, in practice, complete detachment from the
older and larger body. In the second place, to facilitate the
accomplishment of its work there were introduced into it trained
lawyers, expert financiers, and men of other sorts of special
aptitudes--men, often, who in rank were but commoners. Finally, there
split off from the body a succession of committees, to each of which
was assigned a particular branch of administrative or judicial
business. In this manner arose the four great courts of law: (1) the
Court of Exchequer, to which was consigned jurisdiction over all
fiscal causes in which the crown was directly concerned; (2) the Court
of Common Pleas, with jurisdiction over civil cases between subject
and subject; (3) the Court of King's Bench, presided over nominally by
the king himself and taking cognizance of a variety of cases for which
other provision was not made; and (4) the Court of Chancery, which,
under the presidency of the Chancellor, heard and decided cases
involving the principles of equity. The differentiation of these
tribunals, beginning in the early twelfth century, was completed by
the middle of the fourteenth. Technically, all were co-ordinate
courts, from which appeal lay to the King in Council; and of the
judicial prerogative which the Council as a whole thus retained there
are still, as will be pointed out, certain survivals. By the time
of Henry VI. (1422-1461) the enlargement of membership and the
specialization of functions of the Permanent Council had (p. 018)
progressed so far that the Council had ceased entirely to be a working
unit. In the end what happened was that, precisely as the Permanent
Council had been derived by selection from the original Great Council,
so from the overgrown Permanent Council was constituted, in the
fifteenth century, a smaller and more compact administrative body to
which was assigned the designation of "Privy Council."[17]

[Footnote 17: Stubbs, Constitutional History, II.,
Chap. 13; White, Making of the English
Constitution, 123-251; Adams, Origin of the English
Constitution, 136-143; W. S. Holdsworth, History of