This is a clear misinterpretation of the intention of Magna Carta. The Exchequer never “followed the Crown”; it stayed at Westminster where its offices, tallies, and pipe rolls were. The Charter would have expressed itself in widely different words if it had desired to exclude common pleas from the Exchequer. The Articuli super Cartas, however, attempted what the Charter of 1215 did not. After 1300 it was clearly illegal to hold any pleas in the Exchequer, unless such as affected the Crown and its ministers. Subsequent statutes confirmed this; but their plain intention was always defeated by the ingenious use of legal fictions and the connivance of the Barons of Exchequer, who welcomed the increase of their fees which kept pace with the increase of business.[[546]]
The evil directly attacked by Magna Carta was something quite different—an evil wider, more pressing and less technical, namely, the practice of causing ordinary litigants, with their legal advisers and witnesses, to dance attendance on a constantly moving court.
[534]. Cf. J. F. Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law, I. 88-9.
[535]. Jurisprudence and Ethics, 209. Sometimes, however, another “fixed place” was substituted. The Court of Common Pleas once sat at York under Edward III. and at Hertford under Elizabeth. See Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, xiii. The Statute 2 Edward III. c. 11, enacted that it should not be removed to any new place without due notice.
[536]. See Prof. Maitland, Select Pleas of the Crown, xiii.-xvi.
[537]. Cf. supra, 109.
[538]. The chronicler known as Benedict Abbot, I. 107 (Rolls Series).
[539]. House of Lords, 32.
[540]. See Prof. Maitland, Sel. Pl. Crown, xiii.-xvi.; see also in Pipe Roll, 7 John (cited Madox, I. 791) how money was paid that a plea pending before the Justiciarii de banco might be heard coram rege. This entry proves that in 1205 there were two distinct courts, one known as de banco and the other as coram rege.