A specific group of full-time councilors heard pleas of private suitors. By royal proclamation of 1546, only those admitted by the Chancellor and two chief justices may practice as counsel or in legal pleading in any of the King's courts. Also, such a person must be serjeant-at-law, reader, utter barrister, or an eight-year fellow of one of the four houses of court, except in the Court of Common Pleas.
Doctors of the civil law may practice in the church or Chancery courts.
The Chancery court enforced the obligations known as trusts, in the name of equity and good conscience. It adopted every analogy that the common law presented. Its procedure was to force the defendant to answer on oath the charges that were brought against him. All pleadings and usually testimony was put into writing. Much evidence consisted of written affidavits. There was no jury. The Chancery court did not record its decisions apparently because it did not see itself as bound by precedents.
When acting as the highest court, the House of Lords was presided over by the Chancellor, who sat on his prescribed place on the wool sacks. It had the following jurisdiction: trial of peers for high treason and serious felony, appeals on writs of error from courts of the common law, and impeachment. The House of Lords served as judge of impeachment cases, whereas the House of Commons served as fact finders.
Witnesses could be sworn in to state pertinent facts necessary for full understanding and adjudication of cases, because they are reliable now that there is no unlicensed livery and maintenance and because jurors no longer necessarily know all the relevant facts.
Justices shall tax inhabitants of the county for building gaols throughout the nation, for imprisonment of felons, to be kept by the sheriffs and repaired out of the Exchequer.
Piracy at sea or in river or creek or port are adjudicated in counties because of the difficulty of obtaining witnesses from the ship, who might be murdered or who are on other voyages on the sea, for adjudication by the admiral.
Piracy and murder on ships is punishable by death only after confession or proof by disinterested witnesses.
Land held by tenants in common may be partitioned by court order, because some of these tenants have cut down all the trees to take the wood and pulled down the houses to convert the material to their own use.
Persons worth 800s. a year in goods shall be admitted in trials of felons in corporate towns although they have no freehold of land.