The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-07-10 00:00:00

THE COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH.
(From Wednesday's Times.)

An august and ancient tribunal—the most ancient
and august of any save the "High Court of Parlia-
ment "—yesterday virtually ceased to exist. The Court
of Queen's Bench, which represents a tribunal held be-
fore the King himself at least a thousand years ago,
sat yesterday for the last time, and in all human pro-
bability will never sit again. It may not technically
cease to exist until November, and until then it sur-
vives merely as an ens rationis—an idea or conception of
the mind; but it will actually assemble no more. It
held a Bitting on Monday for the purpose of 'giving judg-
ments, and those judgments will be its last, for, unless
something unforeseen happens, it will never sit again.
It is impossible (as Lord Coleridge observed a year or
BO ago) to contemplate without a feeling of interest,
and perhaps a passing pang of regret,. the extinction
and passing away of so august and ancient an institu-
tion. Even in this country, so tenacious in its tradi-
tions and institutions, and, most of all, in its judicial
institutions, the Queen's Bench, as it was curtly called,
or, to use its correct legal title, "the Court of the
King before the Kin..' himself "—" cora= ipso rege "
wm the most ancient of all, and far more ancient than
Parliament itself; for it can be traced back clearly in the
substance of its nature and character, and in the essence
of its jurisdiction to the time of Alfred—above ten cen-
turies ago. It is a curious circumstance that, reckoning
from the accession of Alfred in 871---the earliest date at
which such a jurisdiction can be shown to have been
exercised—to the year 1870, when the original of the
Judicature Act which abolished it was introduced,
just a thousand years should have elapsed. It is one
of the greatest glories of Alfred that he gave a close
and zealous attention to the administration of justice
—especially criminal justice—by all Judges in his
dominions and corrected their errors or excesses;
and in all succeeding reigns down to the Conquest,
and even since the Conquest down to this
day, there can be traced the existence of a tribunal,
held originally before the King in person in his Council,
before which all inferior. Judges were liable to be cited,
their abuses or excesses of jurisdiction corrected,
and their exercise of their jurisdiction compelled
and controlled. It is exactly that jurisdiction which
the Court of King's Bench has always exercised since
it existed by that name, its great distinction being that
it was the Court of Error from all Criminal Courts,
and that it was the Court which exercised a sovereign
jurisdiction over the magistracy, and a supreme power
in the way either of commanding them to exercise
their jurisdiction in cases within it, or of prohibiting
them from exercising it in cases not within it, or of
setting aside their sentences if they exceeded their
jurisdiction, or of punishing them if they abused it.
In short, the very jurisdiction which from Alfred's
Laws and Alfred's Life, we find that great Sovereign,
like so many of his suxeasore, exercised in person, this
great Court has exercised ever since it existed as a legal
tribunal, with that proud name and title so well
expressing its ancient origin, and so clearly show-
ing its identity with its ancient original, "The
Court of the King before the King himself." So
early as the reign of Henry 11. we find it mentioned
by that name and title—" as held before the King
himself ;" though in the reign of Edward I. we find
the King insisting that the Judges should follow him
wherever he went to sit in his Council, and as late as
the 15th century it was sometimes described as held
"before the King in Council"—" coram Bege in Con-
cub." Lord Coke proudly boasted that, like the
Chancery, its title was "Corain .Rege," and he boasted
that it excelled the Chancery in dignity as being
coram, ipso rege" But, in truth, these two great
Courts were in dignity the same, both being held
before the King in person or his Council, and both exer-
cising that high prerogative jurisdiction which Lord
Bacon described as the "Pu ntorian jurisdiction" of the
Chancery and the "Censorial jurisdiction" of the
King's Berta; There la eaeon to believe that the juris.