LAW AND THE COURTS 24!

also be used to set the King's will above the law? Considerations
of convenience prevailed, and Law and Equity Courts continued
to exist side by side. The 1873 Act knitted the administration
of the two systems together, so that the rules of both Law and
Equity are administered both in the King's Bench and Chancery
divisions. To-day, therefore, criminal matters go to King's
Bench; civil actions may go either to King's Bench or Chancery,
'though cases which will require chiefly the application of the
rules of Equity usually go to the latter. Sa the Chancellor's court
still, as in the past, specializes in cases arising from trusts and the
administration of property.

Through the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, the
High Court has taken to itself duties previously performed by
special courts. In the Middle Ages, the Church occupied a position
of great importance; and since at marriage and death the individual
required the ministrations of the Church, Church courts dealt
with questions of marriage, divorce and the proving of wills—
proving/that is, that they had been made in the proper form, and
that any claims of Church or State over the property of the
deceased had been satisfied. Shipping and the Navy had developed
their own Court of Admiralty, to deal vith disputes about maritime
affairs and crimes committed at sea. These separate Admiralty and
Ecclesiastical Courts were absorbed in the High Court by the 1873
Judicature Act; so the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division
handles a miscellany of problems which in .the past required
special treatment

In London the civil work of the High Court is performed at
the Law Courts in the Strand, while some of the King's Bench
judges try criminal cases at the Central Criminal Court (The Old
Bailey). In addition, King's Bench judges make regular tours of
the country holding Assizes at certain towns; there they try all
persons who have been committed by the lower criminal courts
in that district, and settle such civil actions as have not already
been brought to London.