178 The Period of Constitution Making
in Ms presence en route, while the Bench remained at
Westminster. Thus arose a distinction between the body
of judges who habitually did justice in the king's presence
(coram rege} and those who remained at the centre and
usually did justice without the king. That this distinc-
tion was recognised before the end of John's reign is
shown by the well-known clause in Magna Carta: "Com-
mon pleas shall not foUow our cpurj^ but ^shall be hepln
somejixed^glace."I So many were seeking justice at the
king's court that it had become a matter of importance to
know where the common pleas, thf^iyil^
man and man, were tobeja,ken. During the long minority
oFTlenry III., there^was no coram rege court as distin-
guished from the Bench at Westminster; but upon the
king's coming of age, or very soon after, the same differen-
tiation appeared as in the preceding reign, and from that
time there was, besides the Exchequer and the Bench,
another central court, scarcely as yet to be distinguished
from the council, the characteristic of which was the king's
presence. This was the beginning of the Court of King's
Bench, a court which quite naturally came to SEaTwith
the important cjjzni,DaLc§ses, the pleas of the crown.2
As thelater medieval kings gradually ceased tiEeiFpSegri-
nations, this court, like the others, became_stationary
at Westam^tgr. The Bench always remained the^jtech-
nicainamelor the courtw^se main^business com&ii§£d
ffiej:^ btit it camejbQ be
more generally called^qmmon JBench or^Common^Eleas.
Thus^onginated the three central, common-law courts,
Exchequer, King's Bench, and Common Pleas. Yet these
were never quite co-ordinate. Exchequer and King's
Bench were gradual unconscious growths from the su-
preme source of judicial authority, the king and his coun-
cil, and always kept traces of their high origin. Indeed
it was not until about the beginning of Edward III.'s
1 Yet it is to be noticed that the barons, in this article, did not specify a
court but a class of cases. The groups of judges were hardly as yet defin-
able courts.
a See above, p. 162, note 2.