MRP: Legal Glossary

C17th legal glossary

This page provides a legal glossary to Chancery and other commercial oriented legal processes in the mid seventeenth century

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== Annuity =
Variant: Annuitie
Example:

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Answer

Example:

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Assignment of lease

Example:

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Bayle

Example: "I went to Councell & soe to Yeld hall where I caused Bayle both for y:e 15000:ll & your goods which were nallowed [?] at 3600:ll ... 25th September 1662, Letter from Elizabeth Dalyson to Sir GO

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Bill of complaint

Example: "Humbly complayning showing unto yo:r Lordship"

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Breach of promise

Example: Allegation by Judith May that Maximilian Dallison was in breach of his promise to marry her by subsequently marrying Elizabeth Oxenden (SP 16/266/79; SP 16/266/80)

There is a useful early C19th exegesis of an action for breach of promise in - S.B. Harrison & Frederic Edwards, A practical abridgement of the law of nisi prius: together with the general principles of law applicable to the civil relation of persons, and the subject-matters of legal contention, vol. 2 (London, 1838), pp. 959-961

There is a late C19th book addressing the potential abolition of the action for breach of promise in the context of significant change in the 1870s to marital law. See MacColla, Charles J., Breach of promise: its history and social considerations, to which are added a few pages on the law of breach of promise and a glance at many amusing cases since the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1879)

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== Charge =
Variants: Chardge; Allowable charge

Example: "had power to charge or dispose of ye said Lease"; "ye charges of renewing of ye said Lease satisffyed "; "uncharged"

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Confederation

Variant: Confederacon

Example:

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Consideration

Variants: Consideracion

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Counterpart

Example:

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Court of Chancery

Example:

The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales, which applied loose rules of 'equity' to provide an alternative to the possible 'inequity' of the common law. The jurisdiction of the court included trusts, land law, the administration of the estate of lunatics, and the guardianship of infants.

The litigation between the Oxenden and Dallison family following the death of Elizabeth Dallison was primarily about an alleged trust or trusts held by various members of the Oxenden family and their representatives, hence it was pursued in the Court of Chancery.

See wikipedia entry on - Court of Chancery

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Court of Common Pleas

Example: "according to advise remooved y:e sute up into y:e Common pleas" 25th September 1662, Letter from Elizabeth Dalyson to Sir GO

Created in the late C12th/early C13th, the Court of Common Pleas sat in Westminster Hall, as did the Court of King's Bench and the Exchequer of Pleas. The jurisdiction of the Court of Common pleas was over "common pleas", that is actions between subject and subject and not involving the King. The Court of Common Pleas had exclusive jurisdiction over real property. It was headed by a Chief Justice and a number of puisne justices, who were serjeants-at-law. Serjeants at law and King's serjeants had right of audience before the court, which was not open to every barrister. The court ceased to exist in 1873, when it was merged with the Court of King's Bench and the Exchequer of Pleas.

Considerable competition developed between the Court of Common Pleas and other courts such as the Court of King's Bench and the Chancery over jurisdiction, with the latter two being perceived as cheaper and faster through innovations by their chief justices in legal process and legal concepts. Conflict continued in the 1660s at the time of the Oxenden vs Love et al litigation in Chancery (with a brief diversion via the Court of Pleas).

See Wikipedia entry on - the English Court of Common Pleas

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Court of the King's bench

Example:

- Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), of the Inner Temple, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench (1613-1616), having previously been the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas

See above entry on Court of Common Pleas

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Court of Requests

Example: "For the benefit of Trade and Act was obtained in 1781 to establish a court or requests, for the more easy and speedy recovery of small debts under the value of forty shillings, within the city of Rochester, and the several parishes of Strood, Frindsbury, Cobham, Shorne, Higham, Cliffe, Cooling, High-Halstow, Chalk, Hoo, Burham, Wouldham, Halling, Coxstone, Chatham, Gillingham, and the Ville of Sheerness in the county of Kent."
- (Sammuel Denne, with W. Shrubsole, History and antiquities of Rochester and its environs (Rochester, 1815), p. 315)

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Devise

Example: "the Bishop of Rochester devised to the said Robert Raworth ye said Bishops place & premisses for ye lives of yo:r orators mother your orator & his son"

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Dispose

Example:

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== Equity =
Example: "Said Mother had the legall Interest of & in the said lands & p:rmisses, or otherwise that shee had some equitable power to charge the said Lands by her said will"

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Estate

Example: "temporal estate"

See wikipedia entry on - estates in land. This entry categorises different types of estate: freehold, leasehold, statutory, and equitable

For further background information see wikipedia entry on - trusts and estates

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Exchequer of Pleas

Example:

The Exchequer of Pleas was headed by the Chief Baron of Exchequer. The chief baron sat with three puisne barons to hear suits in the court of equity and settled revenue disputes.

Sir Christopher Turnor, the father-in-law of James Master, Sir George Oxenden's nephew and one of Sir George's legal advisors, was a Baron of the Exchequer. That is, he was a 'baron' or judge of the English Exchequer of Pleas. He was appointed serjeant at law and third baron in 1660. James Master married his daughte, Joyce, in 1667.

Chief Barons of the Exchequer at the time of the Oxenden litigation with Love et al and separately with Dallison and Stanley were Sir Orlando Bridgman and Sir Mathew Hale. However, the Exchequer of Pleas was not a court with jurisdiction over the issues in these suits. Bridgman was made Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1660, shortly before being made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (1660-1666), and then subsequently was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (1667-1672). Hale was made Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1660, immediately after Bridgman. Hale had acted as a barrister for royalists, but was made a Justice of the Common Please by Cromwell. In 1671 he was appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

See ‘Memoirs of Sir Christopher Turnor,’ in The biographical mirrour (London, 1795)
See wikipedia entry on - Sir Christopher Turnor
See wikipedia entry on - Sir Orlando Bridgman
See wikipedia entry on - Sir Edward Hale

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Indenture

Example: "indentures tripartite"

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Interogatory

Example:

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Jointure

Variants: Joynture
Example:

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Lease

Example:

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Personal property

Example:

See wikipedia entry on - personal property

== Portion =
Variants: Porcion; Marriage portion

Example: "Said Mother demanded to have paid her one Thousand pounds for the portions of her two Daughters"

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Power to dispose

Example:

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Real property

Example:

See wikipedia entry on - real property

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Reversion

Example: "Granted the reversion of the same lands "

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Trust

Variant: Trusts

Example: “the Trusts hereby lymmitted to the said Maximilian Dallison Mary Dallison and Margaret Dallison should cease”; "did acknowledge as the Trust was & is that shee had not legall Title or Interest in the said lands"

For background information see wikipedia entry on - 'wills and trusts'

For further background information see wikipedia entry on - trusts and estates

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Writ of condemnation

Example: "all yoar goodes in Bretons house & in his handes & your five hundred pounds in y:e East India Comp:a was attached [could be “attacked”] by Breton, Nowell, Pearse and a writt of condemnation ready to pass" 25th September 1662, Letter from Elizabeth Dalyson to Sir GO

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Writ of subpoena

Example: "his mat:ies most gratious writt or writts of Subpoena"

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Year book

Example:

"Year books" collected reports on important legal cases. They provided lawyers with a written record from which to stay abreast of legal decision making.

Statham's Abridgement, published in the C15th, provides a view of the volume of past decided cases by this period.

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TERMS FOR POSSIBLE INCLUSION

Act (actings and proceedings)
Action
Administrator
Bargain & sale (bargained and sold; contract of bargain and sale)
Beneficiary
Canon/Civil law

• Used in church courts and courts of Admiralty

Common law

• Common law not taught at universities until 1828

Common reason (dissonant to common reason)
Converted (converted to own use)
Hereditaments
Interest (interest in land; Said Mother had the legall Interest of & in the said lands & p:rmisses)
Life (lease for three lives)
Possessed (possessed and interested of and in)
Premises (lands and premisses)
Recital (as by the said recital)
Released (estate settled and released)
Rent (rent and profits; Rents issues & proffits)
Residue (of a term of a lease)
Surrender (an interest, a lease)
Value (yearly value; rent at a year)
Tenements
Unnatural

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Inner Temple historical legal glossary

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