Mapping jurisdictions

The later fifteenth century is sometimes depicted as a period of lawlessness and ineffective administration of justice, but from the perspective of lawyers and legal institutions the evidence for this is far from clear-cut. Most of the features of the English legal system that figure significantly in its later history were already in place. Although the fortunes of lawyers were subject to some fluctuations, there were also important signs of professional vitality. Last, but hardly least, many of the intellectual foundations for thinking about the place of law in politics and society were laid before 1530.

The principal common-law courts, King's Bench, Common Pleas and the Exchequer of Pleas, all three of which dealt with civil litigation between subjects over questions concerning their movable property, money and land, were by the reign of Henry V firmly settled in the royal palace at Westminster, and their records had been carefully kept on large parchment rolls since the twelfth century. Although the volume of business involved was much smaller, the traditional responsibility of the king's council for delivering justice was also devolved in the fifteenth century into firmly established jurisdictions, the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber. For centuries previously, the Chancery had functioned primarily as that part of the royal bureaucracy which issued the original writs necessary in order to initiate suits in other royal courts.