xxviii      Introduction to the Legal Procedure.

         The judicial writs issued in the Court of Chancery in litigation belonging
        in that court, after the issue of original writs, may require preliminary general
        explanation. In the fourteenth century and somewhat later in the higher
        courts, and apparently until still later in the minor courts, equitable or extraor-
        dinary remedies and reliefs were granted along with those now distinguished
        as common law remedies and reliefs, and it was as these fell into disuse in
        those courts that a practice grew up of resorting to the prerogative of the King,
        exercised through his Chancellor, to obtain the justice demanded in exceptional
        cases not provided for by the general rules and procedure in the ordinary courts.
        For a time this occasional interposition was not regulated by fixed rules, but
        by the seventeenth century the force of routine and precedent had built up
        a body of controlling rules and principles for the Chancellor's court, the
        Court of Chancery, as well as for the older, common law courts. This fact
        is made evident in the present record. But the proceedings of the Court of
        Chancery retained a character of their own. The Chancellor and his assistants
        were always ecclesiastics until the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More having
        been the first lay, or lawyer, Chancellor, and consequently the proceedings were
        generally in the form of those known in the ecclesiastical courts.
         Accordingly, judicial proceedings in the Chancery Court, as in the ecclesi-
        astical courts, were initiated by the complainant's filing with the court a bill
        or petition reciting the facts out of which his complaint arose, and, ordinarily,
        praying that for the allowance of the appropriate relief the defendant or de-
        fendants complained of be brought into court and required to answer the com-
        plaint made. The order to a defendant to come in and answer was what was
        called the writ of subpoena ad respondendum. The word subpoena, in Chancery
        practice, and in this record, has a variety of meanings. As previously stated,
        it is a form of writ which commands some action by the person addressed,
        under a penalty for disobedience, sub poena. The subpoena ad respondendum
        is the form mentioned most frequently here, and it will often be found referred
        to merely as the subpoena, or Spa. The few transcribed at length are transla-
        tions of the Latin form which had been in use since the fourteenth century.
        Its command to the defendant to be and personally appear in court was adopted
        in that century, when parties to litigation were brought together in the flesh,
        and made their pleadings by word of mouth before the court officials, but
        by the sixteenth century this personal appearance had ceased to be required,
        in fact, although the form of command was continued in use then and until
        the ninetenth century. Instead, a written answer or demurrer was to be filed.
        Subpoenas will also be found issued here to bring witnesses to testify, and in
        that form they are called from the purpose stated, ad testificandum. Mentions
        of subpoenas duces tecum occur; they were commands to the person named
        to bring into court with him books, papers or other matter needed for the trial.
        In addition, there are subpoenas to hear judgment, to rejoin, and to revive
        suits, and these are self-explanatory.
         It was then deemed essential to any progress with a suit, either in Chancery
        or at common law, that the defendant should, in form at least, submit himself
        voluntarily to the jurisdiction of the court for the purpose. Here again is seen
        a provision for an outgrown conception, this time a very ancient, primitive