An Introduction to the History of Equity and Its Courts

THE REMEDIAL PRINCIPLE OF KEECH v. SANDFORD RECONSIDERED

“…Many of equity's doctrines remained highly uncertain at the turn of the nineteenth century. 148 Yet the idea of legal certainty had become so important that many thought law could not be just without it. 149 The codification movement was particularly vociferous during this period.…”

What did the Royal Almoner do in Britain and Ireland, c.1450-1700?

“…113 To modern eyes the almoner sometimes looks like a bully as he reasoned, cajoled, threatened and sometimes coerced, but he acted as an ecclesiastic belonging to a church that regarded compulsion as a sacred duty (albeit to bring people voluntarily to virtue) and he operated in a context where there was a clear moral obligation. 114 Yet he relied less on naked power than on authority, embodying the fundamental relationship between religion and the law 'as being equally concerned with the question of what it is that enables and sustains human community'. 115 The almoner was an agent of good lordship, constrained by the practical difficulties of enforcing his rights in a polity based above all on willing co-operation; by legal prescriptions and findings; and by the unwritten rules that governed expectations between patron and client, lord and man, ruler and ruled, churchman and Christian.…”