Origins of English Common Law

Timeline

1. 1161–1164Itinerant courts of the English counties · EnglandHenry II restored and systematized itinerant justice, sending judges to the counties to hear criminal cases and land disputes. The Assize of Clarendon (legislative tradition around 1166 connected with reforms of this period) strengthened public order and indictment procedures; writ litigation increased, precedents began to spread between courts, and a trend toward the unification of common law emerged.
2. 1164Clarendon · WiltshireThe Constitutions of Clarendon of 1164 stipulated that clerics accused of crimes must first be indicted in secular courts and that church property and litigation were subject to royal authority, defining the jurisdictional boundary between common law courts and canon law. Though the document provoked conflict between Henry II and Becket, it embodied the common law logic of the expansion of the royal court system.
3. 1165–1170London and Westminster · LondonIn the second half of the 1160s, the accumulation of precedent in the king's courts accelerated regarding possession of land (writs such as Novel Disseisin) and violent crime. After Becket's murder in 1170, church-state relations were shaken, but common law courts continued to operate; judges at Westminster and on circuit continued to form citable precedents, laying the foundation for the common law system later summarized in Glanvill's treatise.