1. Journal of the House of Lords (London, 1802), 3:69.

2. Larkin, James and Hughes, Paul, eds., Stuart Royal Proclamations: Royal Proclamations of James I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 506–7Google Scholar.

3. 21 Jac. I cap. 19; Raithby, John, ed. Statutes of the Realm (London, 1819), vol. 4, pt. 2, 1227–29Google Scholar (hereinafter SR; Journal of the House of Commons (London, 1802), 1:690–91.

4. Direct discussion of the bill of conformity is limited. The principal works are Jones, W. J., “The Foundations of English Bankruptcy: Statutes and Commissions in the Early Modern Period,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69 (3) (1979): 5–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawson, J. P., “The Privy Council and Private Law in the Tudor and Stuart Periods,” Michigan Law Review 48 (1950): 411–13, 627–656Google Scholar; Treiman, Israel, “Majority Control in Compositions: Its Historical Origins and Development,” Virginia Law Review 24 (5) (1938): 507–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ponko, Vincent Jr., “The Privy Council and the Spirit of Elizabeth Economic Management,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 58 (4) (1968): 53–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Stephen, Sir Edward Coke and the Grievances of the Commonwealth (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 60–61Google Scholar; Jones, W. J., Politics and the Bench: The Judges and the Origins of the English Civil War (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), 64, 114Google Scholar; Zaller, Robert, The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Constitutional Conflict (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 75, 86, 90Google Scholar; Prestwich, Menna, Cranfield: Politics and Profits Under the Early Stuarts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 299–300Google Scholar; Hill, L. M., “‘Extreame Detriment’: Failed Credit and the Narration of Indebtedness in the Jacobean Court of Requests,” in Law and Authority in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to Thomas Garden Barnes, ed. Sharp, Buchanan and Fissel, Mark (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 136–56Google Scholar, at 143–46. For debt and bankruptcy in early modern England considered more broadly, see Holdsworth, William, History of English Law (London: Methuen, 1924), 8:99–300Google Scholar, esp. 229–45; Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: the Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muldrew, Craig, “Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a Seventeenth-Century Urban Community,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 46 (1993): 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muldrew, Craig, “The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 915–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levinthal, L. E., “The Early History of Bankruptcy Law,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 66 (1918): 223–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Larkin and Hughes, Stuart Royal Proclamations, 506n1. Contrast Zaller's assessment: “In conception a humane modification of England's barbaric debt laws” (Parliament of 1621, 204n126).

6. I here participate in the new political history that Alan Orr, Stephen Alford, and John Guy have called for, with its emphasis on the interconnections between politics and “ideas and ideologies” found in law, culture, and religion. See also Alford, Stephen, “Politics and Political History in the Tudor Century,” Historical Journal 42 (1999): 535–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guy, John, ed., The Tudor Monarchy (London: St. Martin's, 1997), 1–8Google Scholar; Orr, D. Alan, “A Prospectus for a ‘New’ Constitutional History of Early Modern England,” Albion 36 (2004): 430–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collinson, Patrick, “De republica Anglorum: or, a History with the Politics Put Back,” in his Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon, 1994), 1–29Google Scholar.

7. Equitable analysis privileged the examination of the particulars of the individual case, rather than the application of general rules. Such exceptions were implicit in each positive law as the makers inevitably faced the dilemma that “it is not possyble to make any generall rewle of the law / but that it shall fayle in some case” (German, Christopher St., Doctor and Student, ed. Plucknett, T. F. T. and Barton, J. L. [London: Selden Society, 1974], 97Google Scholar). For analyses of the development of equity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Jones, W. J., The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, Yale, D. E. C., Lord Nottingham's “Manual of Chancery Practice” and “Prolegomena of Chancery and Equity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Prall, Stuart, “The Development of Equity in Tudor England,” American Journal of Legal History 8 (1964): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spence, George, Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery (Philadelphia, 1846, repr. W. S. Hein, 1981), 1:407–24Google Scholar. For a detailed consideration of contemporary definitions of equity, see Thomas Ashe, Epieikeia, “To the Courteous Reader,” (London, 1609), STC 840.

8. Baker, J. H., “The Common Lawyers and the Chancery: 1616,” chapter in his The Legal Profession and the Common Law (London: Hambledon, 1986), 205–29Google Scholar. The clash has been examined several times; see Fortier, Mark, “Equity and Ideas: Coke, Ellesmere, and James VI and I,” in Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I, ed. Fischlin, Daniel and Fortier, Mark (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 265–89Google Scholar; Dawson, J. P., “Coke and Ellesmere Disinterred: The Attack on Chancery in 1616,” Illinois Law Review 36 (1941): 127–52Google Scholar; Knafla, Louis, Law and Politics in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 155–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gardiner, S. R., History of England (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1883), 3:10–24Google Scholar; Holdsworth, William, History of English Law (London: Metheun and Co., 1922), 5:231–38Google Scholar.

9. The historiographical tradition is surveyed by Houlbrooke, Ralph in “James's Reputation, 1625–2005,” in James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, ed. Houlbrooke, Ralph (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 169–90Google Scholar. The standard modern work representing James in a negative light is Willson, D. H., King James VI and I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1962)Google Scholar. Leading essays that began revisionist assessments of James's reign include Schwarz, Marc L., “James I and the Historians: Toward a Reconsideration,” Journal of British Studies 13 (1974): 114–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wormald, Jenny, “James VI and I: Two Kings or One?” History 68 (1983): 187–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. James's most recent biographer has provided an overall positive assessment of the reign but contended that the king “aroused abiding grievances in each of his kingdoms” through missteps in fiscal and religious policy; see Croft, Pauline, King James (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 182–87, 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Louis Knafla has granted the king a shrewd understanding of the legal system: “His thoughts remain surprisingly well developed and credible in an age when many English contemporaries could not understand their own confusing, multilayered legal system or the principles on which it was based” (Louis Knafla, “Britain's Solomon: King James and the Law,” in Fischlin and Fortier, Royal Subjects, 235–64, 255–6).

10. The debtors who sought conformities were typically merchants or those engaged in trade and were often enmeshed in complex credit networks. There were exceptions, such as “decayed gentlemen”; see British Library Lansdowne MS 266, f. 123v.

11. Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 5.

12. The statutes are 34 & 35 Henry 8 cap. 4, SR, vol. 3, 899–90; 13 Eliz. I cap. 7, SR, vol. 4, pt. 1, 539–41; 1 Jac. I cap. 15, SR, vol. 4, pt. 2, 1031–35. The leading case in the period was, The Case of Bankrupts (Smith v. Mills), 2 Coke Report 25a, 76 ER 441–76.

13. For an overview of the historical evolution of the law of insolvency, see Fletcher, Ian F., The Law of Insolvency (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 2002), 6–24Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion of the nineteenth-century law, see Lester, V. Markham, Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt, and Company Winding-up in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 88–89, 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An analysis of the eighteenth-century history of bankruptcy under Mansfield is found in Oldham, James, English Common Law in the Age of Mansfield (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 107–23Google Scholar. The definition of “trader” is found in 13 Eliz., c. 7 and expanded by 21 Jac. I, c. 19.

14. Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 24–25.

15. 34 & 35 Henry 8 cap. 4, SR, vol. 3, 899.

16. W. J. Jones discusses the chancellor's role in granting the commission in his “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 10, 41–43.

17. Imprisonment for debt was limited by the Act of 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 62), but it was not fully abolished until 1970 (Administration of Justice Act); see Cohen, Jay, “The History of Imprisonment for Debt and Its Relation to the Development of Discharge in Bankruptcy,” Journal of Legal History 3 (1982): 153–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While ratable distribution had already appeared as early as the Act of 1543, influenced by continental example, other features of conformity were novel. Discharge was not introduced into bankruptcy until the Act of 1705 (4 Anne, c. 17).

18. Bankruptcy Act 1861 (24 and 25 Victoria, c. 134). Lester, Victorian Insolvency, 16, 19.

19. Holdsworth, History of English Law, 5:492.

20. Coke, Edward, Fourth Part of the Institutes (London, 1644), Wing C4929, 277Google Scholar.

21. Ibid. In his notes on the shortage of specie, Coke blamed the incorrect valuation of English money abroad, the wars in Ireland, and the expense of luxuries (Holkham MS 677, f. 271r, and 44r, 296r).

22. Dekker, Thomas, The Seven Deadly Sinnes of London (London, 1606) STC 6522, 9Google Scholar. See also ibid., 6: “[the bankrupt] sels the goods of his neighbor before his face without blushing: he sets up and downe in silks woven out of other mens stocke, feeds deliciously upon other mens purses, rides on his ten pound Geldings, in other mens saddles.”

23. Howard, Jean, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 83–88Google Scholar. My thanks to Jean Howard for sharing an early draft of this chapter.

24. Malynes, Gerard, Lex Mercatoria (London, 1622), STC 1279, 221Google Scholar.

25. Jones argues that bankruptcy was rare until the eighteenth century (“Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 5–6). Opposition seems to have arisen whenever nonstatutory means to resolve debtor-creditor disputes became formalized through commissions or courts that interfered with the existing bankruptcy statutes or debt laws. In 1603, James Dackombe, writing to James I, recalled how the threat of praemunire had been used to stop special Elizabethan commissions used to order the affairs of imprisoned debtors (British Library Royal MS 18 A 36, f. 8r). On these commissions, see Malynes, Lex Mercatoria, 223, and Acts of the Privy Council, 1581–1582 (London: HMSO, 1890), 175; APC 1587–1588, 99; APC 1589–1590, 109; APC 1591–1592, 384–86.

26. Dawson, “Privy Council,” 410–11, 631.

27. Ibid., 414: “For the creditor who refused to conform to the settlement recommended, there was at least the vague menace of the Council's displeasure, reinforced by an order to appear before the Council to give reasons for his obduracy. Much more than this was apparently not needed.”

28. Dawson, “Privy Council,” 632–36.

29. British Library Lansdowne MS 266. This manuscript has recently been transcribed and published as Hoyle, R. W., ed., Heard Before the King: Registers of Petitions to James I, 1603–16 (Kew: List and Index Society, 2006)Google Scholar. The manuscript must be supplemented for the year 1613 with British Library Additional MS 69910.

30. Dawson observed only two cases related to conformity where the creditors ignored the reference (Dawson, “Privy Council,” 633–4; 634n188 and 189). There were two additional cases “directing performance of arbitral awards.” The commissions can be found engaging with obstinate creditors in British Library, Lansdowne MS 266, ff. 124v, 183v, 201r, 224r, 250r, 257v, 263v, 284r, 293v, 294v.

31. Ibid., 634. Treiman believed that the Privy Council for a time attempted to imprison obstinate creditors, but it relented after suits for false imprisonment were brought (Trieman, “Majority Control,” 514).

32. For a survey of its early work in this field, see Trieman, “Majority Control,” 516–18.

33. Ibid., 519; The National Archives (TNA) C33/103 f. 69v.

34. Ramsey v. Brabson (1584) Choyce Cases Chancery 174, 21 ER 101; Treiman, “Majority Control,” 518–19. For a protection granted by the Privy Council to William Nutshawe for eight months, see APC 1577–78, 315. In 1591 the Council granted a similar protection to Owen Hopton, the lieutenant of the Tower; see Craig, John, “Hopton, Sir Owen (c.1519–1595),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47136 (accessed November 21, 2007).

35. Treiman, “Majority Control,” 519.

36. Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 45.

37. “For the Privy Council this summary jurisdiction of the King must have meant some relief from the distractions of private suitors” (Dawson, “Privy Council,” 635).

38. For example, in an arbitration resulting from a petition to the king, it was indicated that in case of contempt the matter should be referred to the Court of Requests; see TNA SP 40/1 f. 43v.

39. In his response to resistance theorists, James himself cited biblical authority to deny that kings could be resisted even when they degenerated into tyrants and wrongfully seized property (James, I, “Trew Law,” in James I: Political Writings, ed. Sommerville, J. P. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 68–70Google Scholar).

40. Treiman reached a similar conclusion from an entry in the Chancery “Order and Decrees” book: “The Queen granted a protection to Woodcock, Napton and Sewell, to the end they might be better able to pay their debts to all their creditors” (Treiman, “Majority Control,” 518).

41. Pace Prestwich, Cranfield, 299; Treiman, “Majority Control,” 511–12. Merchants had frequent recourse to extralegal arbitration to settle debt disputes. Thomas Powell describes such an arbitration and the drawing of a “letter of license” in The art of thriving. Or, The plaine path-way to preferment. Together with The mysterie and misery of lending and borrowing (London, 1636), STC 20162, 233–38. “Tolerations” were patterned on traditional licenses granted by merchants, as Malynes suggested: “These men therefore are to bee overruled by the Lord Chaunceller, who may compel them to bee conformable with the other creditors, according to the Customes of Merchantes in other countries,” and “the greatest number, or the greater summe of the Creditors being agreed with the Debtor, are bound to be conformable with the other, and to do the like with the helpe of authoritie, not only by the Civile law, but also by the Merchants Court of Prior and Consuls” (Malynes, Lex Mercatoria, 223, 227; Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 45).

42. Metcalf v. Bright, TNA REQ 1/16, f. 918r.

43. Baker, J. H., Introduction to English Legal History, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths, 2002), 120Google Scholar; Baker, J. H., The Oxford History of the Laws of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 6:203–6Google Scholar. The history of the Court of Requests remains to be written, but see the introductions in Leadam, I. S., ed., Select Cases in the Court of Requests (London: Selden Society, 1898)Google Scholar, and Hill, L. M., ed., The Ancient State, Authoritie and Proceedings of the Court of Requests by Sir Julius Caesar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

44. The Masters of Requests served as judges while the Lord Privy Seal was the president of the court. For their role as receivers of petitions and as judges, see R. W. Hoyle, “Introduction,” in Heard Before the King, viii–x; British Library Additional MS 11406, f. 234v; Coke, , Fourth Part of the Institutes (London, 1644), Wing C4929, 97Google Scholar; Smith, Thomas, The Commonwealth of England (London, 1589), STC 22859, 129Google Scholar; James, I, A Declaration of His Maiesties Royall Pleasure, (London, 1610), STC 1378, 8Google Scholar.

45. TNA REQ 2 121/33. See also TNA REQ 2 210/96; REQ 2 71/61.

46. Knafla, “Britain's Solomon,” 240; Dawson, “Privy Council,” 629–36. For James's claim that the king was the “author” of the law and a speaking law, see James I, “Trew Law,” 75. Discussion of the consistency of James's views on kingship can be found in Fortier, “Equity and Ideas,” 278, and the citations there. Fortier writes that Sommerville has “effectively rebutted” the idea that James altered his theories of kingship developed in Scotland after 1610.

47. British Library Lansdowne 266, ff. 166v, 186r.

48. Hoyle, “Introduction,” xx. See also a letter to the Council dated May 1603: “Provided always that except his Majesty shall upon some extraordinary occasion signify his pleasure, that [the Privy Council] are forbidden to interupt the comon justice of the Realme by intermeddling with anie Suites that are depending in courts iudiciall where rights and titles are onely to be decyded, and not anie determinacon to be sett downe at the Counsell table” (British Library Lansdowne MS 160, f. 147r; British Library Lansdowne MS 266, f. 9v).

49. Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Carte 105, f. 94r.

50. One missing period in Lansdowne MS 266, the second half of 1613, appears to be represented by British Library, Additional MS 69910. Other missing periods include the second half of 1603, portions of mid-1604, and most of 1606.

51. R. W. Hoyle has speculated that Lansdowne MS 266 belonged to Sir Ralph Wilbraham, who occupied the mastership from 1601 to 1616 (Hoyle, “Introduction,” xiii).

52. The numbers presented in this paper are only minimums based on one source, the register of petitions, which is known to be incomplete.

53. Bankruptcy proceedings, as it has already been observed, were rare. Relief for insolvent debtors came mostly, it seems, from informal arbitrations. C. W. Brooks gives an estimate of the volume of litigation in the King's Bench and Common Pleas as 23,453 cases in “advanced stages” in 1606. Of this number, Brooks proposes that a large percentage (80 percent in the Common Pleas and 46 percent in the King's Bench) were for debt, suggesting that 15,601 were related to debt proceedings in the two courts. A generous estimate of petitions for conformity received by both ordinary masters would be between 30 and 200 per year or maybe 1 percent of the total proceedings in debt given by Brooks. But it is difficult to interpret the meaning of this percentage, since conformity proceedings often included dozens of different debts and creditors, and also since many debtors, although sued, were not insolvent and may not have wanted to diminish their creditworthiness by a public conformity proceeding (Brooks, Christopher, Lawyers, Litigation and English Society Since 1450 [London: Hambledon, 1998], 11, 17Google Scholar).

54. British Library Lansdowne 266, f. 141r (Justice Fenner), 143v (Serjeant Montague), 162r, 230v (Mayor of London), 173v (Chancellor of the Exchequer); 203r, 262r (Chief Justice of the King's Bench and two of the judges).

55. Creditors are found petitioning at ibid., ff. 79v, 117v, 210r, 224r, 269r.

56. Ibid., f. 162r.

57. Ibid., f. 168v, 173v.

58. Ibid., f. 203r. See a similar case in 1614 after the complaint of Thomas Wood: “Prosecuteth him at the lawe with such extremitie that he feares to go abroade to followe a sute … for certen lands … whereof he purposeth to satisfy all his Creditors.” The instructions to the judges were “to perswade him to forbeare extremitie and to conforme him selfe to such order as the other creditors have done” (ibid., f. 262r).

59. British Library Lansdowne MS 266, f. 272v.

60. A search in the earlier volumes has not revealed any survival of entries related to conformity.

61. TNA REQ 1/25, f. 103r.

62. TNA REQ 1/24, f. 302v.

63. TNA REQ 1/26, f. 767r.

64. TNA REQ 1/24, f. 898v.

65. TNA REQ 1/25, ff. 209r-v.

66. References from the Court of Requests to common-law judges for arbitration were not uncommon; see, for example, TNA REQ 2/217/47 and REQ 1/22, f. 549r. As the register reveals, the king often referred debt arbitration directly to the common-law judges, as in the case of John Lepton, who was a groom of the Privy Chamber, “to call before them all the Creditors of his Majestys servant John Lepton esq to take such order with them as shalbe fitting to equitie and Conscience” (TNA SP 38/9). My thanks to an anonymous reader for background information on Lepton.

67. TNA REQ 1/22, f. 84r.

68. British Library, Lansdowne MS 266, f. 203v.

69. TNA REQ 1/25, f. 103r.

70. TNA REQ 1/26, f. 671r.

71. The number was also given as forty of fifty-four creditors initially consenting and only four remaining obstinate (TNA REQ 1/26, f. 726r).

72. TNA REQ 1/26, f. 748r.

73. TNA REQ 1/26, f. 767r-v. The bill is REQ 2 309/25.

74. Caplin v. Toft, in Cases Concerning Equity, ed. W. H. Bryson (London: Selden Society, 2001), 1:360.

75. Coke himself believed that Requests was no court of judgment at all: “But others taking this jurisdiction to be too narrow, contend to have it extend to all causes in equitie equall with the Chancery, and their decrees to be absolute and uncontrollable. But neither of these are warranted by law” (Coke, Fourth Part of the Institutes, 97). Others also limited the jurisdiction of the court, including Justice Thomas Walmesley in 1600 when he observed that the court was to aid the Privy Council in the resolution of poor men's causes (Inner Temple Barrington MS 6, f. 44r). The idea that Requests served the poor as a “court of conscience” was a commonplace drawn from its origin as a court “for the expedition of poore mennys causes depending in the starred Chambre” (Leadam, Select Cases in the Court of Requests, x–xi). See also Thomas Smith, The Commonwealth of England, 129; R. Robinson, “A breviat concerning the memorable states and conditions of the Queenes Maiesties honorable courts of records” (1588), Harvard University Houghton Library, fMS Eng 976, f. 9r; Lambarde, William, Archeion (London, 1635), STC 15144, 224–30Google Scholar.

76. For overviews of the struggle between the common-law courts and Requests, see I. S. Leadam, “Introduction,” in Select Cases in the Court of Requests, xxxii–xlvi; L. M. Hill, “Introduction,” in The Ancient State, Authoritie and Proceedings of the Court of Requests, ix–xix. Contemporary documents from the collection of Sir Julius Caesar include British Library Additional MS 25248, Lansdowne MS 161, ff. 225–30, 233, 244, 250, Lansdowne MS 125.

77. A partisan report of this case is given by Coke, Fourth Part of the Institutes, 97; Compare the account in Stepney v. Lloyd, Croke Elizabeth 647, 78 ER 886; British Library Additional MS 25248, f. 53v. The plea roll entry for the case is found at TNA CP 40/1610. See the similar and near contemporaneous case of Pagan v. Hearne (1599), British Library Additional MS 25248, f. 52v. Other leading cases in the published reports include Everingham v. Wats (1599) Moore K. B. 735 72 ER 750 and Paine's Case (1607) Yelverton 111, 80 ER 76.

78. Payne's Case (1613), Godbolt 216 78 ER 131. The Common Pleas had also affirmed this principle by prohibition in Harwood v. Jewel (1615) (Cases Concerning Equity, 2:447–48). It was also agreed in 1614 that prohibition to Requests would lie where a remedy was available in a court other than those of the common law (Penson v. Cartwright Croke Jac 345, 79 ER 295; Penson v. Cartwright 2 Bulstrode 207, 80 ER 1071). This decision may have been anticipated by a prohibition prayed by Coke while he was attorney-general to Requests for a cause that was properly heard in the spiritual courts (Harvard Law School Library MS 118, f. 42r). Coke made a similar claim in the parliament of 1621; see Journal of the House of Commons, 1:574.

79. “That where a bill of conformitie hath bin begun in the Court of Requests and prohibition out of the Kings Bench, then he applies himselfe to the chancery where no prohibition doth lye” (Notestein, Wallace et al. , eds., Commons Debates 1621 [New Haven, 1935], 6:64Google Scholar); ibid., 5:39: “but there they were stopped with prohibitions out of Banco Regis.”

80. During the debates it was claimed that it “had bin always used in the chancerie to have bills of conformitie” (TNA SP 14/120, f. 6v). The Chancery, for example, was called upon in 1603 to enforce against the creditors a composition that had arisen during a commission of bankrupts. The size of the original debt was £14,000 (TNA C33/103, ff. 288v–289r; TNA C33/139, f. 398r).

81. Commons Debates 1621, 5:39. Coke observed that the precedent was not yet “twenty-one years ould” (ibid., 6:63–64).

82. This despite the later recollection in Parliament that the procedure in Chancery was a petition to the king, followed by a reference, a commission from the Chancery, and then a bill of conformity exhibited into the Chancery to conform any dissenting creditors (Commons Debates 1621, 2:222; 5:39; 6:63). A petition was exhibited to begin arbitration work in Allinson v. Browning and certify the results back to the court (TNA C33/139, f. 653r). The petition of Alex Peacock in 1620 also appears to have been directly to the chancellor (TNA C38/40). The entry of another case implies that the original reference from the king made the case special (TNA C33/139, f. 526r). However, an original petition to the king is mentioned in many cases, as in TNA C33/139, f. 525r. In John Alabaster's case in 1620 an agreement was reached to relinquish the commission of bankruptcy and accept a composition (TNA C38/40). Chancery support of another agreement to stay a bankruptcy commission is found in Overman and others v. Wright (1620) in Reports of Cases Decided by Francis Bacon, ed. John Ritchie (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1932), 165–66. These stays of the commission appear to be at the initiative of the creditors and not imposed by Chancery practice.

83. Commons Debates 1621, 5:39. Ellesmere may not have been very sympathetic to debtors, and he remonstrated against the relief of imprisoned debtors by habeas corpus (Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 45); Ellesmere, “Memorialles for Iudicature,” 276; Huntington Library Ellesmere MS 2623; Crew remembered an order made by Ellesmere that no more bills of conformity would be permitted without the “king's direction” (Commons Debates 1621, 6:64).

84. “Bills to staie payment of debts which are due by statute recognizance obligacion or bill are not to be allowed unlesse it be in speciall cases where there is no willfull default or grosse negligence” (Sanders, G. W., Orders of the High Court of Chancery, [London: Maxwell and Son, 1845], 1:86Google Scholar).

85. TNA C38/24.

86. The agreement also included the offer of additional credit to Alporte of £5,000 so that he might “follow his trade againe.”

87. TNA C38/24.

88. TNA C38/40, Alabaster et al. v. Alston et al. (1621), C33/139 f. 780v.

89. Ryder v. Turner in Reports of Cases Decided by Francis Bacon, 165.

90. Tiffin v. Hart (1618–19), in Reports of Cases Decided by Francis Bacon, 161; also see TNA C33/139, ff. 340r and 740r for similar commands.

91. Commons Debates 1621, 2:222.

92. Harris, Alexander, The OEconomy of the Fleet, ed. Jessop, Augustus (London: Camden Society, 1879), 108Google Scholar. However, the Commons seems to have believed that there were imprisoned creditors: “That the Master of the Wards may intreat the King to enlarge those, which in Prison, for disobeying the Orders about Bills of Conformity” (Journal of the House of Commons, 1:564).

93. Supple, B. E., Commercial Crisis and Change in England, 1600–1642: A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 52–98Google Scholar, at 52. Further analysis of the causes and effects can be found in Gould, J. G., “The Trade Depression of the Early 1620s,” Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., 7 (1954): 81–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tawney, R. H., Business and Politics Under James I: Lionel Cranfield as Merchant and Minister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 185–87Google Scholar; Wilson, Charles, England's Apprenticeship, 1603–1763, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1984)Google Scholar.

94. By this time the exhibiting of bills of conformity in the Chancery was thought to be “verie frequent” (TNA SP 14/120 f. 6r).

95. Commons Debates 1621, 4:67. The petition was exhibited by Sir Robert Heath on behalf of the citizens of London (ibid., 5:297).

96. Commons Debates 1621, 4:154; Journal of the House of Commons, 1:564.

97. Ibid. “Mr. Solicitor affirms that the petition which the Londoners made the King about references to stop suits and creditors perplexed him much. Wherefore he gave order to the courts of justice that there be no such courses used in this kind” (ibid., 2:222); “Master of Wards. The King is abused in these commissions of bankrupts, for he was so angry as I never saw him since I served him” (ibid., 2:221–22 and 2:100–101).

98. Ibid., 5:297; 6:63.

99. Sanders, Orders of the High Court of Chancery, 1:129–30. Bacon made an exception to these orders in a case that had begun prior to their issuance; see C33/139, f. 526r. For a case amended with the insertion of the creditors in the bill immediately after these orders, see C33/139, f. 489r. The standing orders were enforced, an example of the rejection of a bill of conformity is TNA C33/139, f. 509r-v.

100. Sanders, Orders of the High Court of Chancery, 1:129. For a discussion of contemporary understanding of the “equity of the statute,” see Thorne, S. E., “Introduction,” in A Discourse upon the Exposicion and Understandinge of Statutes, ed. Thorne, S. E. (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1942), 53–68Google Scholar.

101. Commons Debates 1621, 5:296–97. Coker's petition is mentioned in ibid., 6:62.

102. Ibid., 2:222; 4:154–55; 2:297; 6:63. The case is Finch and others v. Hicks and others (1620) in Reports of Cases Decided by Francis Bacon, 166–67.

103. Robert Ashton, “Hicks, Baptist, First Viscount Campden (1551?–1629),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13213 (accessed January 19, 2008).

104. Commons Debates 1621, 2:223; 4:297. On the significance of bonds as acknowledged judgements, see Jones, “Foundations of English Bankruptcy,” 44.

105. Edward Coke sought to limit redress in the Chancery to three areas: “All covins, frauds and deceits … Accident, As when a servant of an Obligor … is sent to pay the mony on the day, and he is robbed etc remedy … The third is breach of trust and confidence” (Coke, Fourth Part of the Institutes, 89).

106. Commons Debates 1621, 5: 298, 40. “Diggs. Theise bills of conformitie hath begot a greater iurisdiction in the chancery then before and therefore desires that it may bee limited and reformed whosoever governes it to the ancient cours” (ibid., 6:64).

107. Ibid., 5:297; 6:63.

108. Ibid., 6:63; 4:154.

109. Ibid., 5:150.

110. Ibid., 4:174: “That his Majestie would take awaye all bills of Conformity And all Proteccions whatsoever Because they hinder Trade”; see also Journal of the House of Commons, 1:564.

111. Ibid., 4:187, 154.

112. Ibid., 5:297.

113. Ibid., 6:63.

114. Ibid., 2:247.

115. Ibid.; see also ibid., 266; Journal of the House of Commons, 1:574.

116. There is little record of debate over the bill in 1624, the parliamentary diaries being dominated by discussion of impositions and Spain (Journal of the House of Commons, 1:684, 694, 696, 744, 751; TNA SP 16/166, f. 17r, 103r, 179v, 185r).

117. 21 Jac. I cap. 19, § 2; SR, vol. 4, pt. 2, 1227.

118. For an examination of Ellemere's reform of the Chancery, see Knafla, Law and Politics, 155–81; Jones, W. J., The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 50–99, 449–89Google Scholar.

119. Caesar, Ancient State, 6, 35.

120. Ibid., 9. Caesar also claimed that the court might hear causes “specially recommended from the King” (ibid., 8).

121. “Nullus recedat a curis cancellariae sine remedio.” Cited in the Earl of Oxford's Case 1 Chancery Reports 6, 21 ER 486. Statute of Westminster 2 (1285), c. 24 and quoted by Chancellor Moreton Anon. (1489) YB Hil 4. Henry VII, fo. 5, pl. 8 (though disputed by Fyneux CJ) and Bereford CJ at YB 21–22 Edward I, 323, “no one should leave the Chancery in despair.” See also Ellesmere's own tract supporting Chancery jurisdiction that was published posthumously: Privileges and Prerogative of the High Court of Chancery (London, 1641), Wing B4099.

122. Bryson, “Introduction,” xix–xx; J. H. Baker, English Legal History, 55–56, 101–3. Historians have debated the origins of the equitable jurisdiction and the link between its emergence and limitations imposed on the writ system after the Provisions of Oxford (1258).

123. Ellesmere, “A Breviate for the Kinges Councell,” in Knafla, Law and Politics, 320.

124. “Equitas est publici Iuris moderatio a pectore regis” (Ellesmere, “Breviate for the Kinges Councell,” 325).

125. British Library Lansdowne MS 174, f. 211r. Such statements abound: “The Court of Channcery is the Kings Prerogative royall, and all other Courts except the Parliament are inferior to the same. For the Channcerie draweth all manner of actions from all other Courts as by appellation to his Kinglie Majesty” (British Library Additional MS 20700, ff. 13v–14r).

126. James I, “A Speech in the Starre-Chamber, the XX of June Anno 1616,” in Political Writings, 204–28. Fortier believed that “the triumph of equity, therefore, fit in with James's long-standing views on the nature of royal authority in a settled kingdom. In England, the common law is the law of the land. But the law of the land also embraces a separate court of equity, and equity, as the law of the king's conscience, the exercise of his prerogative for mercy and fairness, is closer to the king and closer to God's law” (Mark Fortier, “Equity and Ideas,” 283). For a discussion of the dispute between Ellesmere and Coke, see Holdsworth, W. S., History of English Law, (London, 1966), 5:231–38.Google Scholar; Dawson, J. P., “Coke and Ellesmere Disinterred: The Attack on Chancery in 1616,” Illinois Law Review 36 (1941): 127–52Google Scholar; Baker, J. H., “The Common Lawyers and the Chancery, 1616,” Irish Jurist 4 (1969): 368–92Google Scholar; Knafla, Law and Politics, 155–82; Fortier, Mark, “Equity and Ideas: Coke, Ellesmere, and James I,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 1255–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127. Contemporaries were aware that the bankruptcy law made it difficult or impossible for debtors to recoup their losses, and they pointed to the loss of business caused by the need for insolvent individuals to keep to their houses in order to avoid arrest (TNA REQ 1/26, f. 668r). There were attempts in the sixteenth century to enlarge imprisoned debtors temporarily so that they might conduct business, though this practice was not held good by the courts (Baker, J. H., “Introduction,” in Reports from the Lost Notebooks of Sir James Dyer [London: Selden Society, 1994], 1:lxxxii–lxxxiiiGoogle Scholar); Cohen, “History of Imprisonment for Debt,” 153–71.

128. One entry relating to conformity describes how the remedy will allow the debtor's trade to resume, relieve many poor people, and permit repayment to the creditors (TNA C33/135, f. 407r). See also TNA C38/40, Creditors of Susan Palmer v. Wadlowe (1620). This case also reveals that conformity might be profitable to the creditors who swapped £1,140 of their debt for £1,800 that was owed Susan Palmer's deceased husband (C33/139, ff. 780v-–781r).

129. The practice of lending itself was hedged by charitable strictures. One writer on the subject described the “charitable extent of the creditors curtesie,” and recommended that the creditor “doth not onely lend or trust, but farther giveth it a blessing, that it may yield much increase to the borrower and debtor” (Thomas Powell, The art of thriving, 214–16). Muldrew, Craig, “Interpreting the Market: The Ethics of Credit and Community Relations in Early Modern England,” Social History 18 (1993): 163–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alsop, James, “Ethics in the Marketplace: Gerard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643,” Journal of British Studies 28 (1989): 97–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

130. Commons Debates 1621, 2:96. Coke was echoing the statute of Westminster I, 3 Edw. I, cap. 51, which he cited as the inscription to his Ninth Reports: “And forasmuch as it is great Charity to do Right unto all Men at all times” (SR, vol. 1, 39). Commenting on this maxim, Anthony Ben noted Coke's citation and observed, “I infer that if that be the best justice that is done with most charity, and that the best charity against which no time or terme shuts up any gates, then the Chauncery of all other Courts doth the best Justice” (British Library Lansdowne MS 174, f. 209r).

131. TNA REQ 2/310/9.

132. TNA REQ 2/405/64.

133. TNA C38/38, Middleton v. Holte.

134. TNA REQ 2/310/9.

135. TNA REQ 2/310/28.

136. Commons Debates 1621, 4:154.

137. James I, “Basilicon Doron,” in Political Writings, 17.

138. James I, “Trew Law,” 65.

139. Knafla, “Britain's Solomon: King James and the Law,” 249–51.

140. James I, “20 June 1616,” in Political Writings, 214. See also Anthony Ben's comments in defense of the Chancery: “If this Justice and aequitie be kept towardes the people whether it be by the Comon lawe or by that which asswagethe the rigor of the Comon lawe it is all one, so as Justice bee done, for that is not Justice alwaies that is done by the lawe, but that is evermore lawe that is done by Justice … According to the holy text mercy and trueth preserve the King and his throne shalbe established by equity” (British Library Lansdowne MS 174, f. 206r).

141. Ibid.

142. The best analysis of James's attitude towards equity is Fortier's “Equity and Ideas.”

143. TNA C38/24. The petition of Thomas Alport.

144. Commons Debates 1621, 6:63, and see ibid., 4:155.

145. This sentiment was echoed in a dictum by Justice John Glanvill in the Common Pleas while reviewing a habeas corpus on an imprisonment by the Court of Requests: “let that be left unto the parties conscience and rather then the lawe be broken let 20 such be undone” (Smith's Case [1600], Inner Temple Barrington MS 6, f. 44v).

146. Case of Alton Woods, 1 Coke Report 53a, 76 ER 120.

147. Jenny Wormald has cautioned against assuming that James's works on statecraft were serious statements of his beliefs in the English context. James Hart has resisted this argument; see Hart, James Jr., The Rule of Law: 1603–1660 (Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2003), 80–81Google Scholar.

148. James I and VI, “Basilicon Doron,” 45.

149. Xenophon, , The Education of Cyrus, trans. Ambler, Wayne (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 32Google Scholar.

150. Ibid.

151. Ibid.

152. Fortier, “Equity and Ideas,” 278.

153. James I and VI, “Basilicon Doron,” 24.

154. Referring to magistrates, James declared “that place is no place for you to utter your affections in, you must not there hate your foe nor love your friend, feare the offence of the greater partie or pity the miserie of the meaner; yee must be blind and not see distinctions of persons” (James, “19 March 1604,” in Political Writings, 142).

155. The Court of Requests appears to have continued to entertain suits for conformity after 1621; see Hill, “Extreame Detriment,” 148.

156. Commons Debates 1621, 7:105.

157. Ibid. This idea was pursued by Alexander Harris who believed that the solution was a law that might persuade individuals to a “voluntary act of charity” (Harris, OEconomy, 108).

158. For claims by defendants of various attempts used to manipulate conformity proceedings, such as incorrect statements of the debts or debtors exaggerating their poverty, see TNA C33/139, f. 525r; REQ 2/398/92; Herbie v. Bailie et al., C38/36.

159. Malynes, Lex Mercatoria, 227.

160. British Library Additional MS 41613, f. 118r.

161. Snagg, Robert, The Antiquity and Original of the Court of Chancery and the Authority of the Lord Chancellor of England (London, 1654), Wing S4381, 74Google Scholar.

162. Dekker, Seven Deadly Sinnes, 6.

163. Muldrew, Craig, “The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 915–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

164. There may have also been an increase in lending between nonmerchants and merchants. Several dissenters in conformity cases were widows who might have been seeking income in the credit market, but who were reluctant to relinquish their capital. Malynes warned merchants to take care from whom they borrowed (Malynes, Lex Mercatoria, 221–22).

165. Ibid., 221.

166. Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 327.

167. “Thus the immense amount of litigation created by the growth of the market in the late sixteenth century became extremely worrisome. Increasingly, sociability came to be interpreted negatively, as the need to maintain such trust in order that commerce might continue. As trust became problematic, the necessity of legal authority to enforce promises came to be stressed as much as honesty” (Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 320–21). Brooks, Christopher, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 48–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks, Lawyers, Litigation and English Society Since 1450, 27–128. Robert Palmer has recently revised Brooks's figures upwards, see Palmer, “Litigiousness in Early Modern England and Wales,” http://aalt.law.uh.edu/Litigiousness/Litigiousness.html (accessed November 20, 2007). Wilfrid Prest has also examined this phenomenon in relation to the growth of the number of barristers; see Prest, , Rise of the Barristers: a Social History of the English Bar, 1590–1640, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 49–82Google Scholar, and his earlier The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590–1640 (London: Longman, 1972), 50–51. For some of the local causes that prompted the increased litigation, see Clark, Peter, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: Religion, Politics and Society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Hassocks: Harvester, 1977), 279–84Google Scholar. Others have focused on increasing commercial activity as the cause; see, for example, Williams, Penry, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1606 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 150–51Google Scholar.

168. Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 271.

169. Writers frequently voiced complaints over equitable courts frustrating obligations securing debts; see British Library Additional MS 41613, f. 118r.

170. TNA REQ 1/150.

171. For a survey on attitudes towards property in this period, see Sommerville, J. P., Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London: Addison, Wesley, Longman, 1999), 140–53Google Scholar.