From the latter source was derived the English Common
Law, a system of precedents which, in spite of curious subtleties and
technicalities, remains the most striking monument of medieval jurisprudence.
In and after the fourteenth century it was supplemented by Equity, the law of
the Chancellor's court, to which those suitors might repair whose grievances
could not be remedied at Common Law, but were held worthy of special redress by
the king in his character of a patron and protector of the defenceless. Lastly,
on the fiscal side, the work of the sheriffs and of the judges was supervised
by the Exchequer, a chamber of audit and receipt, to which the sheriffs
rendered a half-yearly statement, and in which were prepared the articles of inquiry
for the itinerant justices. Originally a branch of the Curia Regis and a
tribunal as well as a treasury, the Exchequer always remains in close
connection with the judicial system, since one of the three Courts of Common
Law is primarily concerned with suits which affect the royal revenue. Such was
the English scheme of administration, and mutatis mutandis it was
reproduced in France.
Here the royal demesne, small in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, was enormously enlarged by the annexations of Philip Augustus and
the later Capets, who brought under their immediate control the larger part of
the Angevin inheritance, the great fiefs of Toulouse and Champagne, and many
smaller territories. To provide for the government of these acquisitions, there
was built up, in the course of the thirteenth century, an administrative hierarchy
consisting of provosts, who correspond to the bailiffs of English hundreds, of baillis
and senechaux who resemble the English sheriffs, of enqueteurs
who perambulate the demesne making inspections and holding sessions in the same
manner as the English Justices in Eyre. All these functionaries are
controlled, from the time of St. Louis, by the Chambre des Comptes and
the Parlement, the one a fiscal department, the other a supreme court of
first instance and appeal. Within the Parlement there is a distinction
between the Courts of Common Law and the Chambre des Reqeutes which
deals with petitions by the rules of Equity.
