1. See, for instance, Jones, W. J., The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford, 1967).Google Scholar

2. Baker, J. H., An Introduction to English Legal History, 3d ed. (London, 1990), 114.Google Scholar

3. Chrimes, S. B., An Introduction to the Administrative History of Medieval England, Oxford Studies in Mediaeval History, vol. 7, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1966).Google ScholarMaxwell-Lyte, H. C., Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926).Google ScholarTout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–1933)Google Scholar; “The Household of Chancery and Its Disintegration,” in Essays in History Presented to Reginald Lane Poole, ed. Davis, H. W. C. (Oxford, 1927Google Scholar; repr. 1969), 46–85, also in The Collected Papers of Thomas Frederick Tout with a Memoir and Bibliography, 3 vols. (Manchester, 1932–34), vol. 2, 143–72. Wilkinson, B., “The Chancery,” in English Government at Work, 1327–1336, I, ed. Willard, J. F., Morris, W. A. (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 162–205Google Scholar; The Chancery under Edward III (Manchester, 1929). All of the aspects of organization, personnel, and administration mentioned in this discussion are treated by at least one of these authors, and most are discussed by all.

4. Chrimes, Administrative History, 241–42. Prosopographical material has been presented by Smith, Charles W. in “Some Trends in the English Royal Chancery: 1377–1483,” Medieval Prosopography 6 (1985), 69–94.Google Scholar

5. The following brief description is taken from Baker, English Legal History, 114–18.

6. In the fifteenth century the only nonclerical chancellors were Thomas Beaufort, knight and later first earl of Dorset and first duke of Exeter (chancellor 1410–11) and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury (chancellor 1454–55). In the fourteenth century there were considerably more chancellors who were not clergy: Robert Bourchier, knight (chancellor 1340–41); Robert Parving, knight (chancellor 1341–43); Robert Sadington, knight and former chief baron of the Exchequer (chancellor 1343–45); Robert Thorpe, knight and former CJCB (chancellor 1371–72); John Knyvet, knight and former CJKB (chancellor 1372–77); Richard Scrope, lord Scrope of Bolton (1378–80, 1381–82); Michael de la Pole, knight, first earl of Suffolk (chancellor 1383–86). In total, however, these seven men held the office for less than sixteen years. In the sixteenth century Thomas More (chancellor 1529–32) looms large as the first of what would be, by and large, lay and often common-law incumbents of the office. Episcopal chancellors did reappear during Mary's brief reign. See Handbook of British Chronology, 3d ed., eds. Fryde, E. B., Greenway, D. E., Porter, S., and Roy, I. (London, 1986).Google Scholar

7. The impact of the character of the incumbent upon the office of chancellor could be significant, despite the growth of a stable bureaucracy to run the Chancery. There are many works on the bishop-administrators of the Middle Ages, but the following may be mentioned as especially applicable to the late medieval period: Margaret E. Avery, “Chancellor John Stafford,” unpubl. paper (University of Waikato, New Zealand); Campbell, J., The Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England, new ed. by Mallory, J. A., 12 vols. (Boston, 1874–1881)Google Scholar; Dunning, R. W., “The Households of the Bishops of Bath and Wells in the Later Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 110 (1965–1966), 24–39Google Scholar; Jacob, E. F., “Archbishop John Stafford,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 12 (1962), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Jacob, E. F., Essays in Later Medieval History (Manchester and New York, 1968), 35–57Google Scholar; Rosenthal, J. T., “The Training of an Elite Group: English Bishops in the Fifteenth Century,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 60, pt. 5 (Philadelphia, 1970).Google Scholar

8. Baker, English Legal History, 116.

9. Plucknett, T. F. T., A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th ed. (London, 1956), 180.Google ScholarPalgrave, Francis, An Essay upon the Original Authority of the King's Council (London, 1834).Google Scholar One of the main proponents of this view was J. F. Baldwin. In his 1913 work on the king's Council he began his chapter on the relationship between the Council and the chancellor with the statement that “There is nothing in the institutional history of England more remarkable than the development of the office of chancellor” (The King's Council in England in the Middle Ages [Oxford, 1913], 236). He noted further that this remarkable development was “a mysterious transformation” whereby a purely administrative office “grasped” judicial functions and eventually became a great court. It was able to achieve this, Baldwin believed, because in the thirteenth century the Chancery was not simply an executive office but a branch of the curia regis and from its beginning had “followed the methods of the curia regis as a body of consultation” (237). There does seem to be some discrepancy between an office that grasps and a body that is consulted. The question cannot be pursued here in detail, but it would be interesting to determine whether the Chancery actively sought to expand its judicial activities by making claims to jurisdiction in the same way that common-law courts did, or whether it developed from people bringing their difficulties to it in the hope of resolution. The latter suggestion seems more viable and is supported by the findings presented in the second part of this essay. For Baldwin, this consultative quality of the Chancery was crucial to its later development. The aspect central to the growth of Chancery as a court in its own right was, however, the referral to the chancellor of petitions directed to the Council and to Parliament. The history of this process of referral, and especially of the evolving relationship between the chancellor and the Council in matters judicial, was given extensive treatment (254–61).

10. Select Cases in Chancery A.D. 1364–1471, ed. Baildon, William P., Publications of the Seiden Society, vol. 10 (1896), xxvi.Google Scholar

11. Baildon believed that a proclamation of 1349 to the sheriffs of London distinguished matters of grace and matters of common law and that this was “a contrast [which] certainly suggests that something in the nature of equitable relief was in the king's mind.” The text on which he based his observation is as follows: “volumus quod quilibet negocia tam communem legem regni nostri Anglie quam graciam nostram specialem concernencia penes nosmetipsos habens exnunc prosequenda, eadem negocia, videlicet, negocia ad communem legem penes venerabilem virum electum Cantuariensem confirmatum Cancellarium nostrum per ipsum expedienda, et alia negocia de gracia nostra concernenda penes eundem Cancellarium seu dilectum clericum nostrum Custodem sigilli nostri privati prosequantur; ita quod …” (from Close Roll 22 Edward III, p.2 m.2d) (Ibid., xvii–xviii).

12. Ibid., xviii.

13. Ibid., xix.

14. Baker, English Legal History, 117.

15. Ibid., 117–18. The closing sentence is nicely adapted from Maitland, F. W., Equity: A Course of Lectures, 2d ed., eds. Chaytor, A. H. and Whittaker, W. J., rev. Branyate, J. (Cambridge, 1936), 17.Google Scholar Remarking on the twenty-fifth section of the Judicature Act (1873) Maitland argued that despite the provisions of this legislation, which implied conflict between common law and equity, such antagonism was untrue. Noting occasional disagreements, and especially Coke/Ellesmere, he remarked that this debate belonged to the “old days” and that for two centuries before 1875 the two systems had been working together harmoniously: “Equity had come not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” As shall be seen, Baker's replacement of equity with the person of the chancellor is of the utmost importance and advances the argument considerably.

16. Baker, English Legal History, 118.

17. Ibid., 119.

18. See Haskett, T. S., “The Presentation of Cases in Medieval Chancery Bills,” in Legal History in the Making, Papers Presented to the Ninth British Legal History Conference, University of Glasgow 1989, eds. Gordon, W. M. and Fergus, T. D. (London, 1991), 11–28.Google Scholar

19. Baker, English Legal History, 119.

20. Ibid., 118.

21. Avery, Margaret E., “The History of the Equitable Jurisdiction of Chancery before 1460,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 42 (1969), 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Only two other scholars have published work that is based directly upon the records of the court, although the scope and range of their studies is much smaller than Avery's: Pronay, Nicholas, “The Chancellor, the Chancery, and the Council at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in British Government and Administration: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes, eds. Hearder, H. and Loyn, H. R. (Cardiff, 1974), 87–103Google Scholar; Metzger, Franz, “The Last Phase of the Medieval Chancery,” in Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History, Papers Presented to the Edinburgh Legal History Conference, 1977, ed. Harding, A., Royal Historical Society Studies in History, no. 22 (London, 1980), 79–89.Google ScholarMetzger's, unpublished dissertation, “Das Englische Kanzleigericht unter Kardinal Wolsey, 1515–1529,” (Erlangen Ph.D., 1976)Google Scholar, presents a statistical analysis of 7,476 Chancery cases from Wolsey's tenure. Guy, J. A. in “Thomas More as Successor to Wolsey,” Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 52 (1977), 275–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides statistical notes on 1,222 cases from More's time in office.

22. Holdsworth, William S., A History of English Law, 4th ed., 16 vols. (London, 1936Google Scholar; repr. 1966), vol. 2, 346–47. In discussing the second of his three factors he notes that these ideas of conscience were “borrowed from the canon lawyers.”

23. Ibid., 591–92, 596–97. In opposition to Holdsworth's suggestion of new developments in Chancery jurisprudence, G. B. Adams argued forcefully for the idea of the origin and development of equity in king and Council. He posited a continual line of equity through the royal prerogative, beginning with the Council at the Conquest and ending with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in modern times. From this line branched off three major arenas in which the equity that was still dependent on the prerogative was administered: in the common law courts until the fifteenth century; in Chancery; and in the court of Star Chamber (Council and Courts in Anglo-Norman England [London and New Haven, 1926], 200–205). For Adams, common law and equity originated together as an undifferentiated system within the king's duty to provide justice and security through his prerogative authority and administration (185). As the common law—itself a method of improving the administration of justice through the use of the prerogative—hardened into a fixed system, the prerogative was sought again to provide needed flexibility; from this second stage came the mature equity system (189 n.22).

24. Post, J. B., “Equitable Resorts before 1450,” in Law, Litigants and the Legal Profession, Papers Presented to the Fourth British Legal History Conference, University of Birmingham 1979, eds. Ives, E. W. and Manchester, A. H.. Royal Historical Society Studies in History, no. 36 (London, 1983), 68–69.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 78.

26. Ibid., 71.

27. Understanding of such activity has been advanced in one specific area by Rawcliffe, Carole in “The Great Lord as Peacekeeper: Arbitration by English Noblemen and Their Councils in the Later Middle Ages,” in Law and Social Change in British History, Papers Presented to the Bristol Legal History Conference, 1981, eds. Guy, J. A. and Beale, H. G. (London, 1984), 34–54.Google Scholar

28. Post, “Equitable Resorts,” 78.

29. Maitland, F. W., The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1908), 225.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., 222.

31. Ibid., 224.

32. Maitland, Equity, 5. Baker, after H. Coing and J. L. Barton, notes that the specific model for Chancery process may have been the denunciatio evangelica (English Legal History, 199 n.26); see infra at nn.55–68.

33. Maitland, Equity, 7.

34. Maitland cited George Spence on the side of strong Romanism (The Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, 2 vols. [London, 1846–49; Philadelphia, 1846–50]) and O. W. Holmes opposed to such a notion (“Early English Equity,” in Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, 3 vols. [Boston, 1907–9], vol. 2, 705–21).

35. Maitland, Equity, 8.

36. See the Appendix for a brief discussion of the education and experience of the late medieval chancellors.

37. Maitland, Equity, 8–9.

38. This work is discussed infra at nn.85–98.

39. Vinogradoff, Paul, “Reason and Conscience in Sixteenth-Century Jurisprudence,” Law Quarterly Review 24 (1908), 379.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., 384.

41. Vinogradoff, Paul, Roman Law in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1929Google Scholar; repr. with a new Foreword by Peter Stein, Cambridge and New York, 1968), 117–18.

42. Vinogradoff, “Reason and Conscience,” 380. Adams, Council and Courts, 212.

43. Others have had a more difficult time acknowledging such influences. Even with his strong emphasis on continuity, Adams recognized that the equity system of the Chancery in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries required some explanation. Stalwart in his conviction of the continuous growth of institutional equity from Anglo-Norman times down to the modern period, he asked whether new doctrines were introduced that changed this body of equity sufficiently to constitute a “new, distinct and independent development,” marking the beginning of what he termed “modem equity” (Council and Courts, 205). He recognized that something new was at work in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and fortified his concept of continuity by taking the position that, if any new doctrine was introduced to justify and guide the equity system of the Chancery, it must have occurred after the line of development of “equity proper” had parted from the line of the development of the Council's jurisdiction. “Equity proper” he took to be the jurisdiction of the chancellor, and it was here that new doctrine, which he called “the rule of reason and conscience,” entered. This rule broadened the old function of securing justice for all, allowing the equity court to insist that faith be kept where common law could not act, to insist that unjust advantage not be taken of ignorance or folly, and to prevent fraud based upon the allowance of mere forms. Adams maintained, however, that conscience was not put forward as a substitute for the prerogative basis of justice, but only as proof that the prerogative had the right to interfere in certain cases (208–10). The prime difficulty with Adams's view, of course, is the definition of the new doctrine. He spoke of it often and once stated that it was “borrowed from without” (213), but his only description was that it was comprised of rules of reason and conscience. In fact, Adams actually used the passage from the work of Vinogradoff, cited at the previous note, suggesting what he perceived to be the source of the new doctrine.

44. Barbour, Willard T., “Some Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Chancery,” Harvard Law Review 31 (1917–1918), 835.Google Scholar He describes these ecclesiastics as people “who knew little of the common law but a good deal of another system.”

45. Ibid., 859.

46. O. W. Holmes, for example, made the following statement with respect to the protection of the cestui que use: “As soon as the need for protection was felt, the means of supplying it was at hand. Nothing was easier than for the ecclesiastics who presided in Chancery to carry out there, as secular judges, the principles which their predecessors had striven to enforce in their own tribunals under the rival authority of the Church. As chancellors they were free from those restrictions which confined them as churchmen to suits concerning matrimony and wills” (Select Essays, vol. 2, 715–16). Despite the problematical description of the chancellor as a secular judge, the overly strong emphasis of the Church as a rival authority, and the limitation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to matrimony and wills, this view at least recognised the ecclesiastical character of the chancellor, his familiarity with another procedure, and the presence of principles of law and equity in the canonical tradition.

47. Marchant, Ronald A., The Church under the Law. Justice, Administration and Discipline in the Diocese of York, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1969), 2.Google Scholar

48. Avery, “History,” 144.

49. Ibid., 131.

50. Expanding Avery's list back to Edmund Stafford and forward to Thomas More extends the survey to match the range of the Early Court of Chancery in England Project {ECCE), 1417–1532, described infra, Part II. The Appendix presents a description of each chancellor.

51. Adams, Council and Courts, is a particularly good example of this approach.

52. Avery, “History,” 142.

53. Avery, Margaret E., “An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Court of Chancery under the Lancastrian Kings,” Law Quarterly Review 86 (1970), 90.Google Scholar

54. Not every recent writer is convinced. Post, for instance, believes that the links between canon law and Chancery's equity were tenuous. While he admits that the influence of canonists—both as chancellors and as Chancery clerks—on procedure and judgments “must have been substantial,” analogous to the influence of canonists upon the common-law justices of the thirteenth century, he cautions that “this does not mean that civilian doctrines played any larger part than the general doctrines of the common law in formulating the judgments of the court” (“Equitable Resorts,” 78). But how could it be that merely tenuous links between canon law and the Chancery jurisprudence were the product of canonical influences that were themselves substantial? And how could such links be considered tenuous when these influences, Post admits, could have played as large a part in the development of Chancery's equity as did common-law influences, which he implies were considerable? Post continues that “there is nothing to suggest that litigants resorted to Chancery to get civilian treatment; it is far more likely that they sought the natural justice and common sense which at lower levels would have been meted by mediators unversed in either law” (ibid.). To be sure, there is no requirement that those who resorted to the Court of Chancery for redress actively sought civil-law remedies, and Post is quite right that litigants took their cases to the forum wherein they most expected a favorable decision. But that those who went to the court did not understand the complexities of its jurisprudence in no way implies that that jurisprudence was not present. In other words, a litigant's ignorance of civilian or canonical principles does not mean that the chancellor and his staff were also ignorant. The perception of the petitioners, and especially of those assisting them, is far more complex than Post allows (see the analysis of the diplomatic of the Chancery records in Haskett, “The Presentation of Cases in Medieval Chancery Bills”). Although Post has provided new insights into the Court of Chancery by placing it in a larger context of social control through arbitration, he is driven to a difficult conclusion, which itself admits the necessity of canonical and civilian influence. Indeed, in the same book J. A. Guy suggests, describing the development of protection for beneficiaries involved in the provisions of the use, that “It was the chancellor, following after 1450 the example of the ecclesiastical courts, who began the slow but steady progress by which other interests became guaranteed on the ground of conscience” (“The Development of Equitable Jurisdictions, 1450–1550,” in Law, Litigants and the Legal Profession, 80). The topic could be widened to encompass the broad notions of law and justice in late medieval England. Edward Powell has remarked that academic discussion of the nature of law and government was dominated by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Noting that “it is hard to imagine many JPs thumbing through the Summa Theologica after a hard day at the sessions”—something that the scholar-chancellors might well have done—Powell suggests that Thomas's definitions are relevant because they articulated fundamental principles of medieval thought. “The belief that law was of divine origin,” he states, “that it must be in accord with reason, and that justice entailed giving each man his right, were matters of more than academic interest.” Indeed they were, yet more than just Thomas is of concern here. Also, Powell's statement, based for the Chancery on Baildon's selection of cases (see supra, n.10), that “Petitioners invoking the equitable jurisdiction of the king's council or the chancellor habitually requested the remedy demanded by law and reason,” is inaccurate: most often Chancery petitioners appeal to reason and conscience (Kingship, Law and Society. Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V [Oxford, 1989], 25–29).

55. Coing, H., “English Equity and the Denunciatio Evangelica of the Canon Law,” Law Quarterly Review 71 (1955), 225.Google Scholar Coing remarks that there is a general view that, since most pre-Reformation chancellors were ecclesiastics, there must have been some canon-law influence. He notes that such opinions are always expressed in general terms rather than based on specific aspects of canon law and equity (224).

56. Ibid., 231–32. Further detail strengthens Coing's comparison. Admissability of the remedy in both jurisdictions is to be found either in delectus iustitiae (justice denied because of the plaintiff's weakness or the defendant's power) or through naturalis obligatio (in parol contract). Coing also sees parallels in crimen de sua natura ecclesiasticum (robbery, plundering, wrongful imprisonment), yet concedes that the denunciatio evangelica in such cases duplicated, rather than informed, the English practice, as the kings had long been a source of appeal for such acts of violence (232–33). Substantive rules, too, offer parallels. In general, the enforcement of the duties of reason and conscience is central to both the denunciatio evangelica and Chancery, while neither finds the mere observance of positive law sufficient. Specifically, the denunciatio evangelica draws on the concept of the obligatio naturalis deriving either from consent—whence the enforcement of the nudum pactum, the promise under oath, and the promise given for the benefit of a third person—or from unjust enrichment, that is, the case where “quis locupletatur cum aliena iactura, quia quod alienum est pervenit ad eum” (233–34). The citation is from Bartolus.

57. Coing himself noted that less than 1 percent of the petitions in the Public Record Office had been printed. His estimate was too generous.

58. Ibid., 235.

59. Ibid., 237–38.

60. Ibid., 238.

61. Ibid., 239. In a backhanded compliment, Coing offers this general assessment of English equity. “Equity jurisdiction had an incomparably greater task in England than on the Continent, since in England it had to supplement a much less advanced system of law. That the Chancellors undertook this task remains their glory … for although canon law provided the guiding principles, English equity as a distinct body of law is the expression of the English genius.” He adds, however, that English equity “is yet another illustration of the truth, that European civilisation consists in what the various nations have made of a common inheritance: antique thought and Christian faith” (240). Coing notes that while all trace of the denunciano evangelica disappeared on the Continent in the sixteenth century, it survives in English equity, however much altered (241).

62. Barton, J. L., “Equity in the Medieval Common Law,” in Equity in the World's Legal Systems, ed. Newman, R. A. (Brussels, 1973), 145–47.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., 143–45. Interestingly, Barton makes no mention of Coing's article. He notes that if the denouncing party were himself wronged by the sin, the denunciatio evangelica became the denunciano iudicialis.

64. Ibid., 147. These terms, Barton notes, are anachronistic.

65. Ibid., 147–48. Barton suggests that this would not be extended infinitely. Relieving the contract creditor on the surmise that the debtor would make his law if the plaintiff proceeded at common law was more serious, and relieving the creditor after the debtor had made his law was further than most canonists would go. Barton notes that the common opinion—presumably among the canonists—was that if judgment were given in a competent court, then the justice of the judgment was a matter between the successful party and his confessor (148). This view presents some serious implications for Baker's suggestion that the chancellor exercised the temporal counterpart of the confessional (see infra at n.75).

66. Ibid., 148–49.

67. Ibid., 149–50.

68. Ibid., 151. Barton proceeds to a discussion of the work of Christopher St German, which is discussed infra at nn.85–98.

69. Jones, Elizabethan Court, 2.

70. Maitland, Equity, 7–8.

71. See supra at nn. 16–20.

72. Adams speaks of the rule of reason and conscience as motivating the new doctrine of equity in the Chancery and notes that the function of conscience in such activity was borrowed from the canon lawyers (see supra, n.43). Guy mentions conscience as the ground upon which the chancellors came to guarantee various interests in their court (see supra, n.54).

73. This definition is taken from Baker, English Legal History, 122.

74. Baker, English Legal History, 122.

75. Ibid., 123.

76. As the denunciano was regarded in canon law primarily as a means to prevent sin, Baker's suggestion may find some support from Coing's discussion (see supra at nn. 55–61). Barton, however, indicates that there were points in the canon law beyond which matters of conscience were properly the concern of the internal forum (see supra, n.65).

77. Coing, 223–24. The subsuming of conscience as a part of equity is an interesting and important element in his approach.

78. Metzger, “The Last Phase of the Medieval Chancery,” 79.

79. Ibid., 87. Edith G. Henderson chose to work in this period because it was with such decree rolls that the Court of Chancery began to keep “systematic records of its doings for its own use” (“Relief from Bonds in the English Chancery: Mid-Sixteenth Century,” American Journal of Legal History 18 [1974], 298–306, at 298).

80. See infra at nn.85–98.

81. Metzger, “The Last Phase of the Medieval Chancery,” 89.

82. The Reports of Sir John Spelman, vol. 2, ed. Baker, J. H., Publications of the Seiden Society, vol. 94 (1977), 37.Google Scholar

83. Ibid., 37–38.

84. For a brief description of the main features of Chancery process, see supra at nn. 16–20.

85. St German's Doctor and Student, eds. Plucknett, T. F. T. and Barton, J. L., Publications of the Seiden Society, vol. 91 (1974), xiv–xv.Google Scholar

86. Ibid., 3.

87. Charles Donahue Jr., review of St German's Doctor and Student, eds. Plucknett, T. F. T. and Barton, J. L., in The Legal History Review 47 (1979), 182–83.Google Scholar

88. Spelman, 39.

89. Donahue remarks that the book is “unsurpassed as a source of information about the activities of the Chancery in St German's day” and tells us much about the author and the intellectuai milieu in which he lived (review of St German's Doctor and Student, 184). S. F, C. Milsom, too, is at pains to place Doctor and Student in context, noting that it marked an important stage in English legal thought, “not because it was new but because it linked the medieval world to the modern.” The appeal to conscience—the medieval element—was not novel; the new element was “a positive human law beginning to be conceived in substantive terms, in terms of a rule that on these facts this result ought to follow, and on those facts that result” (Milsom, S. F. C., Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2d ed. [London, 1981], 89).Google Scholar

90. Doctor and Student, xxvi.

91. Ibid., xxviii. See xi–xiv for a discussion of St German's political and religious views.

92. For examples of such difficulties, see ibid., xxviii–xxix.

93. Ibid., xxix. Barton discusses in detail the relationship between law, conscience, and the canonists (xxix–xxxix) and then considers the relationship between canon law, conscience, and the chancellor (xxxix–xliv).

94. Ibid., xli.

95. Ibid., xliii–xliv.

96. Ibid., xlvi–xlvii.

97. Ibid., xlviii.

98. The same approach must be taken with two related works. The dialogues were followed by The Replication of a Serjeant at the Laws of England and The Little Treatise concerning Writs of Subpoena, the former probably and the latter certainly written by St German himself (Christopher St German on Chancery and Statute, ed. J. A. Guy, Publications of the Seiden Society, Supplementary Series, vol. 6 [1985], 56–63). Guy has emphasized that their significance lies in their continuation of the dialogues of Doctor and Student concerning the relation of the laws of England to equity and conscience, now with specific reference to the contemporary practice of the Court of Chancery. The Little Treatise in particular affords a special opportunity to understand St German's thoughts on Chancery and equity as they developed after Wolsey's departure and the difficulties of More's chancellorship (64). Chapters nine and ten, Guy notes, extend St German's argument into the more general aspects of contemporary theory on Chancery, equity, and the chancellor's own conscience (81). In assessing the discussion in chapter seven of what the chancellor ought not to be doing, he observes that the author's views concerning equity's boundaries were essentially those reached by the early seventeenth-century judges and that in sixteenth-century terms “St German was marginally ahead of his time” (87). Guy concludes that, within the framework of the renaissance of common-law process after 1550, “it is clear that St German's legal writings were, in fact, themselves part of the process by which new ideas were assimilated with traditional forms …. They trace the genesis of the new-style debates that galvanised lawyers in the age of Reformation” (94).

99. Milsom, Historical Foundations, 84. Other modern scholars have also recognized the error in looking for equity in the medieval Chancery. D. E. C Yale notes that conscience was the ground upon which relief was prayed in the fifteenth-century Chancery petitions and observes that “the rarest word at this time is ‘equity’, though it appears occasionally from earlier times” (Lord Nottingham's Chancery Cases, vol. 1, ed. Yale, D. E. C., Publications of the Seiden Society, vol. 73 [1954], xxxviii).Google Scholar In his study of assumpsit A. W. B. Simpson argues that, while it is true that the Chancery gave remedy by subpoena in situations where the common-law courts would not or could not, and that the Chancery had a settled practice in some matters, we cannot suppose that this was based on a body of legal theory called equity. The chancellor applied conscience, not equity, and Simpson believes it is very difficult to demonstrate a pedigree of the principles on which they acted, or to say what they were (A History of the Common Law of Contract. The Rise of the Action of Assumpsit [Oxford, 1975], 328).

100. Doe, Norman, Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law, (Cambridge, 1990), 3–4.Google Scholar

101. Ibid., 4, 178.

102. Ibid., 4–5, 177.

103. Ibid., 6.

104. Ibid., 132. Interestingly, Doe's suggestion is based on Baker, Milsom, Holdsworth, and Baildon only.

105. Whether conscience and the other principles Doe discusses are “large” ideas is debatable; they are certainly immensely powerful ones.

106. Doe, Fundamental Authority, 132.

107. He is able to do this in several areas. Legislative decisions, he suggests, resort to the combinations of reason and conscience, or droit and conscience, as justification for their provisions, and often it is the consequence of an action rather than the action itself that is the offense against conscience. In these cases conscience functions as an expression of morality and is integral to the legislative decision (ibid., 137–38). Doe divides the role of conscience into four types: determination of the lawfulness of conduct when both law and conscience require the result; conscience used alone to produce an outcome; a tension between conscience and common law requirements; the application of the conclusions of law in preference to conscience. The last produced one of the classic types of case that went to Chancery: a debtor under a bond had to show written evidence of acquittance; otherwise the written obligation was incontrovertible evidence of the debt. While Doe posits that there is considerable evidence of appeal to conscience and that this was often central to the justification of legislative and judicial decisions, his conclusion that “This was happening outside the chancery, where similar ideas were at work,” may be somewhat misleading (139–44). Certainly, the principle of conscience was not restricted to the chancellor's court, but the common law did, as Doe's third and fourth types of judicial decisions themselves show, reach points beyond which it could not, or would not, go in making manifest the principle. This is not to say that judges and legislators were unthinking or immoral, but common law did have its limits and this is why Chancery was needed, to permit extension of the law to the full demands of conscience.

108. Ibid., 144–46.

109. Ibid., 146–48.

110. Ibid., 148–53.

111. Ibid., 153.

112. A second modern approach to the Court of Chancery may be noted here, for it pertains to Doe's mention of the voluntarist view of law. Robert C. Palmer's treatment of Chancery moves back to the older and standard treatment of the institutional changes that might account for the development of the court. Palmer's premise is that governance in England after the Black Death was qualitatively different than before. The government was “intent on using the law to control society, to preserve as far as possible the status quo.” In order to do this it became responsible for running the whole of society and became “a government of inherent authority” (English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law [Chapel Hill, 1993], 5–6). Palmer, like Doe, makes the distinction that the medieval Chancery was a court of conscience and not of equity. But only in concluding his chapter on the chancellor's court does he comment that both the enfeoffment to use and the chancellor's court of conscience “owe something of their origins to the Black Death;” he then notes that the plague was “instrumental” in the development of Chancery as a court of conscience; finally he suggests that the relationship between the use and the Black Death is “somewhat tenuous” and that it rests on the general purposes of the use and an increased emphasis that feoffees, along with other people, should stand by their obligations (130–32). Palmer sees Chancery adjudication as but one element in a governmental policy facilitated in part by the upper levels of society standing by their obligations, obligations to which he applies the term “ethical” (132). There is not much more to be found under the subtitle “The Growth of the Chancellor's Court of Conscience.” Conscience is equated with the chancellor's discretion, and no more (107). The well-known proclamation of 1349—which, because of the cancellation of Parliament directed petitioners to sent their common-law problems to the chancellor—is cited as the beginning of a tradition that resulted in the chancellor's court of conscience (109). Placing the beginnings of Chancery adjudication near 1370, Palmer ties this again to post-Plague increased involvement of government in English life, and to the Statute of Labourers in particular. As the king's court became the judicial side of government, the occasional injustices of common law, too, had to be addressed; here, Palmer suggests, was the chancellor's “new jurisdiction in conscience” (110). He develops this thesis through an extensive discussion of the use, and it is to be expected that his treatment of the Court of Chancery is subordinate to that purpose. Palmer's study emphasizes the pragmatic purposes of government, arguing an essentially positivist role for the courts and reminding us that getting things done is a legitimate role of the law. But it does not advance an understanding of the intellectual and moral elements that underlay such developments. In this, perhaps, the book itself is an indication of the triumph of positivism.

113. Pronay, “The Chancellor, the Chancery, and the Council,” 87–88.

114. Ibid., 88–90.

115. Ibid., 90–92.

116. Jones, Elizabethan Court, 7.

117. Ibid., 8–9.

118. Ibid., 12–15. It is, of course, questionable whether the lack of recorded decisions was solely negative; this characteristic gave the court the remarkable flexibility that made it so effective and popular. For the jurist and the historian, undoubtedly, it deprives the researcher of useful material; for the common lawyer, it produces uncertainty.

119. Ibid., 16.

120. Ibid., 177.

121. Ibid., 3–4.

122. Palmer as recently as 1993 remarked that “Neither the use nor the chancellor's court of conscience can be treated with confidence; approaches to the sources do not yet provide firm conclusions” (English Law, 130).

123. Lander, J. R., Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England, 3d ed. (London, 1977), 12–13.Google Scholar Social structure is, of course, but one area of investigation.

124. Milsom, Historical Foundations, 82–83.

125. Bryson, W. H., The Equity Side of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1975), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

126. The author would like to acknowledge the great amount of careful work contributed to the ECCE Project over the past five years by his research team at the University of Victoria, headed from 1992 to 1994 by E. Alexandra Bovey: Brent Burbridge, Chelsea Caldwell, Ramsey Fendali, Karen Forse, Andrew van der Gugten, Sharon Hanen, Joni Miller, Ian Moyer, Sara Plumpton, Simon Tuffin. Without their enthusiastic efforts little could have been accomplished. Funding for the Project from 1991 to 1995 was provided by a generous grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by the University of Victoria. The staff of the Public Record Office, London, has been consistently supportive of the research. Dr. R. F. Hunnisett was enthusiastic and helpful in the formative stages of the work, and Dr. Elizabeth Hallam Smith, Director of Public Services, deserves special thanks for her continual assistance and enthusiasm; Mr. G. Troop and Mr. R. J. Elvin have guided an extensive microfilm undertaking through its various stages.

127. The Decree Rolls, C 78, and the Supplementary Series, C 79 (26 Henry VIII to 1903), contain decrees, orders, and dismissions of the Court of Chancery, which were enrolled to render the judgment more solemn and authoritative. The Entry Books of Decrees and Orders, C 33 (36 Henry VIII to 1875), were kept by the registrars of the court. See Guide to the Contents of the Public Record Office, vol. 1, Legal Records, etc. (London, 1963), 30.Google Scholar

128. Although originally filed in a complicated system that is now only discernible for the postmedieval period, this system reached its most complex form between the reign of James I and 1842. See Guide, vol. 1, 32–33.

129. List of Early Chancery Proceedings, vol. 1, Public Record Office Lists and Indexes No. XII (London, 1901Google Scholar; repr. Kraus 1963), iii.

130. Ibid. Maxwell-Lyte was, of course, fully aware of this difficulty. The problem can be seen clearly from a glance at the chronological table in volume one of the List of Early Chancery Proceedings. The bills gathered together to form Bundle 6, for example, are all addressed to the bishop of Winchester and the period to which they could belong is 1388 x 1392, or 1413 x 1426, or 1456 x 1460 (ibid., vii). Without some method of internal dating or the presence of additional documents or notes on the bill to suggest the correct date, a researcher is faced with the dilemma that a document may come from any one of three periods over a seventy-two-year span.

131. We reached this number by taking the total number of cases that survive in C 1 for the two ten-year spans represented by Samples II and III: the former yields an average of 148 cases per year, the latter 156. The C 1 bundles for Samples IV-VII contain many more cases than do these earlier samples and the sampling rate of 150 cases per year has been applied to them. Baker, in noting that “all actions [in Chancery] were commenced by informal complaint, either by bill or by word of mouth,” adds that this makes it impossible to measure the amount of business in Chancery and that the increase in the number of bills in the fifteenth century “may be due simply to a decline in oral complaints” (English Legal History, 119 and n.27). This could be true, yet it is to argue on the basis of supposition against an overwhelming body of evidence. There is an important element of orality in the work of the early Court of Chancery, but the huge increase in the number of written bills indicates a real change in the volume of the court's business.

132. See Table 1. Only 362 of these cases have been included in the data base; eighteen were omitted due to extensive damage to the documents (see infra, n.133).

133. Two other factors affected our selection. First, there are many instruments in C 1 that are severely damaged. In part this is due simply to grime and age, for it is not unusual to find a parchment on which the writing has been almost wholly obliterated by a grey coating of dirt. Also, there are many tears and holes: often a third to a half of a document is missing. If this were not enough, gall was used with some abandon by earlier readers, and while this enhanced the writing for a short while—and probably explains why the editors of the List of Early Chancery Proceedings could be informative about bills that are now wholly illegible—in the ensuing decades the treatment has created a solid, dark patch on the parchment, rendering further reading difficult or impossible. Such damaged, mutilated, or obscured records were omitted from the data base. Second, from the period of Sample V onwards the editors who created the modern bundle groupings in C 1 began to arrange the cases alphabetically by the first letter of the surnames of the petitioners (this practice begins with C 1/70, which falls between Samples IV and V). This helped to narrow the search range if a researcher was seeking a particular individual, but it also introduced an artificial order to the records that had to be taken into account. In the earlier samples selection was primarily by date range. Within this the existing collections into bundles were essentially haphazard and therefore deemed to be representative geographically, substantively, and demographically. But it is possible that certain initial letters of surnames are more prevalent in one area of the country than another. Thus, alphabetization could affect the quality of the substantive and demographic aspects of the sample. To eliminate such problems, alphabetization ratios—that is, the proportion of each letter within the entire corpus of cases for the sample period—were calculated. These ratios were then applied to the sample selection rate so that when the sample was taken the alphabetical balance of the entire surviving case group was maintained.

134. List of Early Chancery Proceedings, vols. 1–3, Public Record Office Lists and Indexes Nos. XII, XVI, XX (London, 1901, 1903, 1906; repr. Kraus, 1963).

135. Some remarks on this subject may be found in Haskett, T. S., “Country Lawyers? The Composers of English Chancery Bills,” in The Life of the Law, Proceedings of the Tenth British Legal History Conference, University of Oxford 1991, ed. Birks, P. (London, 1993), 9–23.Google Scholar

136. This list is too long to reproduce here. There is an analysis of the major occupations infra, 289–91.

137. C 1/26, no 481.

138. C 1/9, no 75.

139. C 1/26, no 484.

140. These 18,173 constitute 74 percent of the total number of people named in the records. The remainder appear in ancillary roles of various types.

141. Men, from 88 percent to 78 percent; women, from 11 percent to 17 percent; corporate persons, from 1 percent to 5 percent.

142. Assessment of the subjects that brought aldermen and bailiffs into Chancery shows that their occupations did generate some of the activity (see infra, 291ff., for a discussion of the substance of the Chancery cases). Both are involved in arrest and assault cases; aldermen appear in writs and maintenance cases. Bailiffs are found in cases of distraint, entry, escape, lying in wait, negligence, record, surety, threats, and trespass but appear much more often in matters involving writs and imprisonment. Yet both aldermen and bailiffs repeatedly appear in court for personal matters, usually concerning debt and bonds.

143. Petitioners, from 41 percent to 49 percent; respondents, from 59 percent to 51 percent.

144. Petitioners, from 80 percent to 52 percent; respondents, from 20 percent to 48 percent.

145. There are forty-one different roles in the data base.

146. Female petitioner-executors rise from 5.5 percent of the total number of principals in Sample II, to 8.8 percent in Sample VII, while over the same span male petitioner-executors decline from 5.9 percent to 3.2 percent.

147. In Sample VII female petitioner-executors constitute 8.8 percent of the total number of principals, male petitioner-executors 3.2 percent.

148. Sample III: female respondent-executors 24.5 percent, male respondent-executors 3 percent. Sample VII: female respondent-executors 20.2 percent, male respondent-executors 6.1 percent.

149. Currently some restructuring of the data base is under way; this may reveal a few heirs in Samples I—III.

150. Of the total number of principals, 28.4 percent of petitioner-heirs in Sample VII are women, 12.9 percent are men.

151. Respondent-heirs average less that 2 percent of the total number of principals, women and men, although in Sample VII women constitute 3.4 percent, men 0.4 percent.

152. Petitioner-feoffees represent such a small group (0.84 percent of men, 0.15 percent of women) that they need not be included.

153. Samples I, 5.3 percent of the total number of principals; Sample II, 16.1 percent; Sample III, 54 percent.

154. Sample IV, 48.5 percent of the total number of principals; Sample V, 20.6 percent; Sample VI, 8.7 percent.

155. See infra, 29 Iff.

156. A preliminary look at the presence of widows in the Court of Chancery may be found in Haskett, T. S., “The Role of Conscience in Fifteenth-Century English Family Law: Widows in the Court of Chancery,” in Family Law in the Ixite Middle Ages, ed. Guth, DeLloyd J. (Toronto, forthcoming, 1997).Google Scholar

157. Petitioners: Sample II, 16.1 percent of the total number of female principals; Sample VII, 3.9 percent. Respondents: Sample II, 21.8 percent; Sample VII, 16.9 percent.

158. William Paston (William I, 1378–1444) appears first in Sample I (C 1/5, no 52) as a petitioner-feoffee in a case involving messuages in Lynn, Norfolk, and again in Sample II (C 1/ 12, no 28), this time as a respondent, in the first of three cases concerning the affairs of Sir John Fastolf; here the issue is a manor in Norfolk enfeoffed by Fastolf. John Paston, esquire, (John I, 1421–66) appears in Sample III (C 1/29, no 277) as a respondent and feoffee of Fastolf concerning a Surrey holding, and John Paston, knight, (most likely John II, 1442–79) is found in Sample IV (C 1/52, no 90) petitioning over yet other Fastolf holding in Norfolk. Another case in Sample IV (C 1/54, no 304) completes the appearance of the early Pastons, with William (William II, 1436–96) bringing a case over a Norfolk manor. William Paston IV (c. 1479–1554) is found in Sample VI—William Paston, knight, respondent in a case about an official's fees and expenses (C 1/383, no 4), and William Paston, esquire, feoffee-respondent in a dispute with his co-feoffees (C 1/408, no 30; this is clearly the earlier case)—and in Sample VII—William Paston, knight, an executor-respondent in a claim of debts due for the boarding of a lady, her servants, and her family, and of a ward, and for the making of a closet over a chapel so that the lady could see Mass (C 1/671, no 18). See Pasión Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Davis, N., part 1 (Oxford, 1971), lii–lxiv.Google Scholar

159. C 1/28, no 448.

160. For Tables 2, 3, 5, and 6, the numbers in each single sample column are percentages of that particular sample and are calculated to the nearest 0.5 percent; any value less than 2.0 percent has not been included; column totals are the sum of the percentages given, demonstrating how small a proportion the remaining items constitute. For Tables 2 and 5, the numbers in columns I–VII are percentages of the entire sample. For Tables 3 and 6, the numbers in columns I–VII are percentages of the entire sample for the specific subject or action area only.

161. Accord, account, advowson, allowance, bequest, composition, conveyance, copyhold, corrody, demise, devise, dilapidation, dower, dowry, ejectment, enclosure, entry, estate, exclusion, expulsion, farm, franchise/liberty, heritage, inheritance, interest, issues, jointure, lease, life interest, marriage portion, mortgage, occupation, ouster, partition, patronage, possession, presentation, purchase, quit rent, rent, rent-charge, rent-seek, repair, residue, revenues, reversion, right, sale, sealing up, seizure, severance, share, tax, tenancy, tithe, title, use, value, waste.

162. Building, chamber, chantry, fishery, holding, horse-mill, house, land, manor, park, pasture, property, rape, tenement, watercourse, water-mill.

163. Cart, corn, crops, hay, produce, timber, trees, water, wheat, wood.

164. Beasts, bull, cattle, entrails, fish, herring, horses, kine, ostrich, oxen, sheep.

165. Account, administration (by executor), deliverance, delivery, embezzlement, exchange, nondelivery, sale, share.

166. Bequests, chattels, expenses, fifteenth, gift, goods, inheritance, legacy, maund of goods, movables, stuff, valuables. Bell, boat, book, chest, coffer, common-chest, cup, door, girdle, gown, jewel, lead, luggage, plate, roundelette, silver vessel, silver plate, soap, vessel.

167. Bargain, compensation, conveyance, duty, fraud, freight, price, sale, trading, transaction, weight. Merchandise. Cloth, kersey, linen, malt, oil, rosin, salt, wine, woad, wool.

168. Hiring. Carrick, crayer, galley, ketch, ship.

169. Apprenticeship, fellowship, masonry, neglect, service.

170. Abduction, ambush, assault, attack, breaking, breaking and entry, concealment, conspiracy, controversies, debates, deposing, destruction, detention, disturbance, embezzlement, extortion, fear of life, fraud, hunting, ill treatment, imprisonment, injury, killing (animals), lying in wait, mayhem, menace, negligence, ouster, outrage, persecution, ravishment, riot, seizure, severance, slander, threat, trespass.

171. Felony, hanging, murder, protection (of king's enemies), robbery, slaughter, slaying, theft, treason.

172. Departure, statute, statute laborer, statute merchant, statute staple.

173. Daughter, prisoner, residence, wardship.

174. Accusation, amercement, appeal, arbitration, arrest, assignment, assize, attachment, award, bail, bribery, charge, claim, commission, complaint, condemnation, damages, detinue, distraint, distress, election, escape, examination, fine, harmless, indictment, injunction, inquest, inquisition post mortem, judgment, language, maintenance, manor court process, novel disseisin, outlawry, petition, plea, procedendo, process, purgation, remission, rescue, revivor, quare impedit, release, sheriff's turn, statute merchant, statute staple, subpoena, supersedeas, verdict, warrant.

175. Copy, forgery. Account book, acquittance, bill, bill of exchange, bond, certificate, charter, citation, contract (written), counterbond, court roll, decree, deed, documents, evidences, general release, indenture, instrument, letter, letter missive, letter of payment, letter patent, list, memorandum, muniments, notice, obligation, papal bull, papers, patent, receipt, record, register, release, specialty, tally, testament, title deed, will, writ, writing.

176. Account, acknowledgement (of debt), arrears, assessment, balance, dealing, defalcation, exchange, payment, proffers, receipt, repayment, share.

177. Amount, annuity, bequest, contribution, cost, debt, fee, gold, heriot, loan, money, parliamentary expenses, pension, price, proceeds, profits, ransom, recompense, salary, wages.

178. Advice, agreement, contract (verbal), counsel, covenant, cure, deceit, grant, instruction, marriage, marriage agreement/contract, office, pledge, procuring, promise, recognizance, repair, surety, surety for the peace, suretyship, terms, trusts, warranty.

179. Adultery, desertion, excommunication, fruits, mortuaries, offerings, parsonage, plurality, prebend, presentation, priory, provision, reception (of foreign monk), resignation, resistence (to reformers), seduction, temporalities, tithes, usury, women.

180. There is an even steeper decline in the real property cases, 57 percent, if the calculation is made from the 1430s to 1510s (Samples II—VI) and a much higher rise in the instrument cases, 296 percent. The change over Samples II—VII is more significant than that over Samples I–VII, as Sample I is very small and consequently the proportions less reliable than those for the other periods.

181. Subject areas smaller than 2 percent have not been included in the analysis; see supra, n.160.

182. It was noted earlier that men as respondents are especially prominent in Sample III because of their role as feoffees to uses (see supra, 289 and n.153).

183. Baker, English Legal History, 289–94.

184. Because of the detail in the cases it will be some years before there is confirmation that all “holdings” are indeed real property governed by arrangements other than uses. But even if more uses appear than the data at present indicate, this should modify the findings only minimally.

185. There are only twenty-five such cases in the entire data base.

186. For Stafford and the other chancellors, see the relevant entries in Emden, E. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–1959)Google Scholar; A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Oxford, 1963). See also the Dictionary of National Biography, 21 vols., eds. Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney (London, 1908–1909).Google Scholar

187. In the closing sentence of her article Avery points to Stafford's long term of office, noting that he was a man with civilian training and that he provided “an essential continuity of administration at a decisive period in the development of Chancery” (“History,” 144).

188. Bartolus de Saxoferrato, Super prima parte Codicìs; Super secunda parte Codicis; Superprima parte Infortiati; Super secunda parte Infortiati; Super prima parte Digesti noui; Super secunda parte Digesti noui; Super seconda [sic] parte Digesti veteris; Questiones disputatae. Dominicus de S. Geminiano, Super vi Decretalium pars i. Andreas Barbatia, De officiis judicis delegati, legati et judicis ordinarii. Baldus de Ubaldis, Lecture super i–iii Codicis. Nicholeus de Tudeschis, Lecture super i Decretalium, pars i et ti; Lecture super ii Decretalium, pars i; Lecture super ii Decretalium, pars iii; Lecture super iii Decretalium; Lecture super tv et v Decretalium. Ludovicus Pontanus, Singularia juris.

189. Baldus de Ubaldis, Super Codicem; Generales regulae statutorum. Prosodocimus [here Prothodoximus] de Comitibus, In Decretalium librum secundum Lectura.

190. Jason de Mayno, Super infortiati i–iii; Super Digesto Vetere; Super Tit. de actionibus. Johannes de Imola, Super primant partem Digesti noui; Lectura Sexti et Clementinarum. Ph. Decius, Super Decretales. Bartolus de Saxoferrato, Consilia. Andreas Barbatia, De foro competenti. Baldus de Ubaldis, Circa materiam statutorum, etc.; Super digesto nouo; Super primo, secundo et tertio codicis. Prosodocimus de Comitibus, Lectura super Decretalium libri secundi partem primam. Ludovico Pontanus, In Digestum Novum et Codicem. Hostiensis, Super Decretalia and as H. de Segusio, Super Decretales.