page_title: English contract law
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: English contract law / History
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Roma, rione Monti: salita del Grillo: asinistra i Mercati di Traiano, sullo sfondo la Torre delle Milizie
context_page_description: English contract law is a body of law regulating contracts in England and Wales. With its roots in the lex mercatoria and the activism of the judiciary during the industrial revolution, it shares a heritage with countries across the Commonwealth, and to a lesser extent the United States. It is also experiencing gradual change because of the UK's membership of the European Union and international organisations like Unidroit. Any agreement that is enforceable in court is a contract. Because a contract is a voluntary obligation, in contrast to paying compensation for a tort and restitution to reverse unjust enrichment, English law places a high value on ensuring people have truly consented to the deals that bind them in court.
  Generally a contract forms when one person makes an offer, and another person accepts it by communicating their assent or performing the offer's terms. If the terms are certain, and the parties can be presumed from their behaviour to have intended that the terms are binding, generally the agreement is enforceable.
context_section_description: The modern law of contract is primarily a creature of the industrial revolution and the social legislation of the 20th century. However, the foundations of all European contract law are traceable to obligations in Ancient Athenian and Roman law, while the formal development of English law began after the Norman Conquest of 1066. William the Conqueror created a common law across England, but throughout the middle ages the court system was minimal. Access to the courts, in what are now considered contractual disputes, was consciously restricted to a privileged few through onerous requirements of pleading, formalities and court fees. In the local and manorial courts, according to English law's first treatise by Ranulf de Glanville in 1188, if people disputed the payment of a debt they, and witnesses, would attend court and swear oaths (called a wager of law). They risked perjury if they lost the case, and so this was strong encouragement to resolve disputes elsewhere.
  The royal courts, fixed to meet in London by the Magna Carta 1215, accepted claims for "trespass on the case" (more like a tort today). A jury would be called, and no wager of law was needed, but some breach of the King's peace had to be alleged. Gradually, the courts allowed claims where there had been no real trouble, no tort with "force of arms" (vi et armis), but it was still necessary to put this in the pleading. For instance, in 1317 one Simon de Rattlesdene alleged he was sold a tun of wine that was contaminated with salt water and, quite fictitiously, this was said to be done "with force and arms, namely with swords and bows and arrows". The Court of Chancery and the King's Bench slowly started to allow claims without the fictitious allegation of force and arms from around 1350. An action for simple breach of a covenant (a solemn promise) had required production of formal proof of the agreement with a seal. However, in The Humber Ferryman's case a claim was allowed, without any documentary evidence, against a ferryman who dropped a horse overboard that he was contracted to carry across the River Humber. Despite this liberalisation, in the 1200s a threshold of 40 shillings for a dispute's value had been created. Though its importance tapered away with inflation over the years, it foreclosed court access to most people. Moreover, freedom to contract was firmly suppressed among the peasantry. After the Black Death, the Statute of Labourers 1351 prevented any increase in workers' wages fuelling, among other things, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
  Increasingly, the English law on contractual bargains was affected by its trading relations with northern Europe, particularly since the Magna Carta 1215 had guaranteed merchants "safe and secure" exit and entry to England "for buying and selling by the ancient rights and customs, quit from all evil tolls". In 1266 King Henry III had granted the Hanseatic League a charter to trade in England. The "Easterlings" who came by boats brought goods and money that the English called "Sterling", and standard rules for commerce that formed a lex mercatoria, the laws of the merchants. Merchant custom was most influential in the coastal trading ports like London, Boston, Hull and King's Lynn. While the courts were hostile to restraints on trade, a doctrine of consideration was forming, so that to enforce any obligation something of value needed to be conveyed. Some courts remained sceptical that damages might be awarded purely for a broken agreement (that was not a sealed covenant). Other disputes allowed a remedy. In Shepton v Dogge a defendant had agreed in London, where the City courts' custom was to allow claims without covenants under seal, to sell 28 acres of land in Hoxton. Although the house itself was outside London at the time, in Middlesex, a remedy was awarded for deceit, but essentially based on a failure to convey the land.
  The resolution of these restrictions came shortly after 1585, when a new Court of Exchequer Chamber was established to hear common law appeals. In 1602, in Slade v Morley, a grain merchant name
caption: Unidroit, based in Rome and established in 1926 under the League of Nations to unify private law, maintains the influential Principles of International Commercial Contracts of 2004.[30] A similar effort is the Principles of European Contract Law of 2002.[31]
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