II.: Common Pleas and Royal Pleas.

Long before 1215, litigations conducted before the King’s courts had come to be divided roughly into two classes, according as the royal interests were or were not specially affected by the issue. Those on one side of this fluctuating line were known as royal pleas, or “pleas of the Crown,” provisions for holding which are contained in chapter 24, those on the other side as ordinary or “common pleas,” to which alone the present chapter refers. As these ordinary suits did not require to be determined in the royal presence, it was possible to appoint a bench of judges to sit permanently in some fixed spot, selected to suit the convenience of litigants. No town was named in Magna Carta; but Westminster, even then the natural home of law, was probably intended from the first. It is Westminster that Sir Frederick Pollock has in mind when he writes: “We may also say that Magna Carta gave England a capital.” The barons in 1215, in asking this reform, were not insisting on any startling innovation, but demanding merely the observance of a rule long recognized. During most of John’s reign, a court did sit at Westminster dispensing justice, with more or less regularity; and there most “common pleas” were tried, unless John ordered otherwise. Magna Carta confirmed the understanding that “common pleas” should not dance attendance on the King, though it did not name any one fixed place where they should be tried.