Quote#Politics & Power
The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common…
Quote byEdward Jenks · 1861–1939
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter IV, Improved Legal Procedure, p. 45.
English (original)
The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law; and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took place chiefly between 1150 and 1250, must be shared between the officials of the royal Chancery, who framed new forms, and the royal judges, who either allowed them or quashed them.
— Edward Jenks
More from Edward Jenks
The thegn who deems an unjust doom is to lose his thegnship. It is a principle which can be widely applied
But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in …
It is the glory of English Law, that its roots are sunk deep into the soil of national history; that it is the slow product of the age long growth of the national life.
Only when a disputed point has long caused bloodshed and disturbance, or when a successful invader (military or theological) insists on a change, is it necessary to draw up a code.
The man who has been wounded by a chance arrow must not shoot at sight the first man he happens to meet.
Whatever else the Norman Conquest may or may not have done, it made the old haphazard state of legal affairs forever impossible.