In 1523 the theologian John Stokesley was dismissed as a judge in the English court of requests following an investigation by the royal council. This article reconsiders the significance of this episode as part of continuous efforts to define royal justice across the sixteenth century. Grounded in unprecedentedly detailed research in the early Requests archive, the article studies the business and personnel of Requests before, during and after Stokesley’s presidency. It demonstrates that Stokesley’s indiscretions probably undermined the principles of royal justice and required amendment. But this was no simple victory for the common law over extra-legal, equitable justice.
The early Tudor Court of Requests was closely attached to the king's person and his duty to provide ‘indifferent’ justice. In practice, however, it was staffed by members of the attendant royal household and council. Utilizing the little-studied but extensive records of the court, this article traces the rising dominance of the dean of the Chapel Royal and the royal almoner as administrators and judges there from the 1490s to the 1520s. It examines the relationship between supposedly ‘secular’ and ‘spiritual’ activities within the central administration and between the formal and informal structures and ideologies of the church, the law and the royal household. It explores the politics of proximity and the ad hoc nature of early Tudor governance which made the conscience-based jurisdiction in Requests especially convenient to the king and desperate litigants alike. Overall the article argues that although the influence of clergymen in the court waned towards the end of the sixteenth century in favour of common-law judges, its enduring association with ‘poor men's causes’ and ‘conscience’ grew directly from these early clerical underpinnings.
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