‘Allowable or not?’ John Stokesley, the court of requests and royal justice in sixteenth-century England

Abstract

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.

Halls of Power: Changing Political and Administrative Culture at the Palace of Westminster in the Sixteenth Century

“…34 From the late fifteenth century, the Court of Requests, another equity court, which operated as part of the itinerant royal household, could also be found occupying various rooms in the palace. 35 All of these bodies drew their authority from the king's person, but were also capable of acting without his personal presence. The staff of these offices could often also be found in the royal household as part of the networks that bound together administration and the court and regularly shared the palace's thoroughfares.…”

“…19 Similarly, the use of the Lesser Hall (also known as the White Hall) for the Court of Requests in the 1520s would have brought litigants and witnesses into the Privy Palace. 20 Access routes were sometimes unexpected, such as in 1494 when the future Henry VIII and his companions "toke thair waye secretly by our Ladie of Pew through St Stephen's Chapel on to the steyr foote of the ster chambre." 21 Henry and those with him were moving along the riverbank side of the palace from the Privy Palace to the water entrance where their horses waited, but to move secretly through the palace they had to pass through the palace's oratory, its chapel, and the chapel's cloisters to reach the Star Chamber, passing from relatively private to relatively public areas and then back again.…”