The increased use of the Writs of Prohibition in England accompanied a push by the royal government, including Royal Justice, to assert itself against the Church, which was consolidating its power locally as well as in continental Europe and Rome.

The writs of prohibition were issued by a higher court, usually the King’s bench, to halt the actions of a lower court that did not have jurisdiction over an issue. [J. High, A Treatise on Extraordinary Legal Remedies, Embracing Mandamus, Quo Warranto and Prohibition, §764 (3d ed. 1874), Note, 36 Harv. L. Rev. 863 (1922)] The writs originally functioned like administrative orders, though the King’s Bench began treating them like legal commands and used them to declare control over inferior courts. [Plucknett, Concise History of the Common Law, 173] The writ of prohibition was mainly used against ecclesiastical courts, though they were sometimes used against the Admiralty and Chancery courts as well. [Plucknett, 395] While the Chancery continued to act as the main source of adjudication for disputes involving estates and seals, the writ of prohibition was a successful tool of the royal government for limiting the power of the ecclesiastical courts and, more broadly, the power of the church.

The King had political and fiscal reasons for wanting to limit the scope of the ecclesiastical courts. The Church grew more powerful throughout the Medieval Period, especially with the development of a papal monarchy under Pope Innocent III. The Church began to see itself as an institution that was superior to the state. This development in the Church accompanied the growth of the English bureaucratic government, beginning with Henry II and the Angevin kings, who split their time between England and France and needed strong and competent advisors to help run the government in England when they were gone. The writ of prohibition was one way for the King to distinguish royal power from that of the Church. Not obeying the writ resulted in real consequences: if a party violated the writ, they could be subject to imprisonment, fine, and possible damages in favor of the opposing party. [Richard H. Helmholz, Writs of Prohibition and Ecclesiastical Sanctions in the English Courts Christian, 60 Minnesota Law Review 1011 (1975)] The Church reacted by issuing spiritual sanctions against those who used and obeyed the writs, though not against the King or the judges of common law courts. [Helmholz]

The growth of the use of writs of prohibition may also have been a reaction to the increased abuse of the benefit of clergy throughout the Medieval Period. The benefit of clergy, which transferred jurisdiction of all cases that involved clergy from lay courts to ecclesiastical ones, was gradually extended to anyone who could prove his literacy by reading a passage in the Bible. This development, which was formalized in statute under Edward III in 1351, both gave this benefit to lay defendants and came at a time when literacy rates were rising in England. By the time of Elizabeth I, 32% of defendants convicted of capital felonies were able to claim clergy successfully. [David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (1980), 17]. Even for cases not involving felonies, the ecclesiastical courts believed their jurisdiction extended to matters claimed by the common law courts. For example, the English Church Courts claimed they had the right to enforce contracts that were formalized by oath, as they believed this involved a spiritual matter under their control, though common law lawyers disagreed. [Helmholz]

-- KatherineKettle - 15 Oct 2014

The growing power of the Church resulted in jurisdictional overlap between the secular and ecclesiastical courts. Writs of prohibition allowed the King to halt a proceeding in an ecclesiastical court on the grounds that the case matter fell outside of the ecclesiastical courts’ jurisdiction. In other words, the writs of prohibition allowed the secular courts to protect their jurisdictional boundaries. [Charles M. Gray, The Writ of Prohibition: Jurisdiction in Early Modern English Law, 1994]

In addition to posing a threat to the King’s authority, the existence of jurisdictional overlap allowed for forum-shopping. For example, both the King and the Church claimed jurisdiction over disputes between executors and debtors and between creditors and executors. In the Church’s eyes, the right of the executor to collect debts from a decedent’s debtors and the right of creditors to enforce theirs claims against a decedent’s estate were “a proper part of probate administration.” [Helmholz]. Thus, while for most obligations, a testator would have to sue under common law, an executor or creditor could chose between initiating a proceeding in a secular or ecclesiastical court. By issuing a writ of prohibition restraining executors or creditors from suing in an ecclesiastical court, this inequitable disparity in forum options could be resolved. [Helmholz]

As writs of prohibition were rather easy to obtain, in the late thirteenth century, writs of consultation came into use. [John Robert Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 1305-1334, 1980] Writs of consultation allowed for the reversal of a writ of prohibition. If an ecclesiastical court judge felt that a case rightly fell within the Church’s jurisdiction, they could question its appropriateness before the chancellor. If the chancellor agreed, he could issue a writ of consultation, allowing the case to continue in the ecclesiastical court. [Robert C. Palmer, Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350-1550, 2002]

However, the existence of the writs of consultation did not diminish the power of the writs of prohibition. As the chancellor issued the writs of consultation, the question of proper jurisdiction remained the secular courts’ to answer. That said, it can be asserted that “the contemporary boundary between the system of secular and ecclesiastical courts within England was determined primarily by [the interplay between the] writs of prohibition and of consultation”. [Wright]

-- EstherLukman - 17 Oct 2014