The Period of Constitution Making
a writ shall be made, lest it might happen hereafter that the
court should long time fail to minister justice unto com-
plainants.1
But even this slight power to innovate, merely creating
writs for actions which were similar to those already hav-
ing writs of course, was opposed by the judges and soon
became inoperative.2 "Henceforth the common law was
dammed and forced to flow in unnatural artificial chan-
nels. Thus was closed the cycle of original writs, the
catalogue of forms of action to which nought but Statute
could make addition." 3
The mention, in the Statute of Westminster, of Parlia-
ment as a place of legislative authority and the use of the
word statute suggest that Parliament was about to solve
the difficulty by making new laws for new cases. But
there was no Parliament in 1285-in the sense in which the
word is now understood. In this act, it probably meant
nothing more than the king's Council. But there was a
Parliament by the middle of the fourteenth century, and
the principle was being asserted that no new law of a perma-
nent character could come from any other source. Had
Parliament then proceeded to legislate in a copious and
intelligent way, the need felt at that time would have been
met substantially as at present. But this early Parlia-
ment stoutly opposed the making of new writs, and did not
itself produce their equivalent. After an extraordinary
outburst of legislation under Edward L, when Parliament,
if we may speak of one at all, was in its primordial frag-
ments, there ceased, with a few noteworthy exceptions in
the fourteen century, to be important law-making until
the Tudor period.4 This brings the situation squarely
*A. andS., p. 76.
2 This very legislation of Edward I. 's reign, so abundant and funda-
mental, fostered the idea that the Chancery was not the proper source of
new law.
* Maitland, Bracton's Note Book.
« "Parliament seems to have abandoned the idea of controlling the de-
velopment of the common law. Occasionally and spasmodically it would
interfere, devise some new remedy, fill a gap in the register of writs, or