Henry Horwitz

Parliament, policy, and politics in the reign of William III

This is a full-scale narrative of the political history of William IIIs reign, with fundamental emphasis on the interaction between crown and Parliament. Professor Horwitz takes into account local and popular inputs into this process but keeps in focus the decision making at the national level.

Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

No reader of Bleak House is likely to forget its scathing portrayal of the excesses of the unreformed Court of Chancery in the handling of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce . From its publication in 1852–53, it has created an indelible image of the Court, so powerfully influencing historians as well as laymen that it is sometimes hard to remember that it is fiction, and polemical fiction at that. The fiction, however, is built on a secure bedrock of fact; the voluminous testimony and submissions made by Dickenss contemporaries to a series of parliamentary inquiries on the legal system furnish ample backing for much of his “bill of complaint” on such scores as delay and expense, procedural technicality, and inconclusiveness of outcome. Thus, John Forster, a partner in one of the biggest firms in Lincolns Inn, called the Courts delays “heart-sickening” and characterized its “modes of proceedings … as little adapted to the ordinary duration of human life as they are calculated for the determination of differences and the quiet of possessions”; in the same vein, a future master of the rolls averred that “cases have occurred, within my knowledge, in which the whole property to be administered in Chancery, has proved insufficient to pay the costs of the suit.” As with the early nineteenth-century attacks on the unreformed House of Commons and the traditional electoral system, denunciations of the Court of Chancerys failings have a long history and, often, a repetitive quality.

John Locke, Lord Mansfield, and Arbitration During the Eighteenth Century

An exploration of the origins of the Arbitration Act of 1698 and an analysis of court-related arbitration during the next century. Principal conclusions: (1) that the act originated at the board of trade, with John Locke drafting and drawing upon judicial practice of the later 1600s; (2) that use of the acts provisions was limited before the 1770s even though extra-judicial arbitration was proliferating; (3) that thereafter, with the Court of Kings Bench under Lord Mansfield taking the lead, rules of court under the act multiplied; and (4) that arbitration under the act was increasingly ‘legalized’ in procedure and in the qualifications of the arbitrators.

Chancery’s ‘Younger Sister’: the Court of Exchequer and its Equity Jurisdiction, 1649–1841

An analysis of Exchequer equity litigation (subject-matter, parties and procedures), in part by comparison to Chancery. The analysis identifies general similarities as well as some particular features of Exchequer process that help to account the preference of some litigants (or their legal advisers) for pursuing their disputes in Exchequer rather than in Chancery.

The General Election of 1690

In recent years, the “party history” of Williams and Annes reigns has been the subject of renewed interest and controversy, centering especially on the structure of Augustan politics. But amidst the debate over the usefulness and validity of two-party or multi-party analyses, uncharted regions of the political terrain remain to be mapped. Not least among them is the electoral history of the 1690s, and the general election of 1690 is a leading case in point. Historians from Boyer and Burnet down to the most recent student of the politics of Williams reign, D. A. Rubini in his Court and Country 1688-1702 , have commented briefly on this election, describing its conduct and characterizing its results primarily in terms of the rivalry of Whig and Tory. However, in his passing comments on the 1690 election, Rubini does challenge the received notion that the new Commons of March 1690 was “at least moderately Tory” in complexion. Noting that historians have failed hitherto to use the “black lists” published by supporters of the opposing groups during the campaign as a yardstick of its outcome, he goes on to suggest that the Whigs “did considerably better than has generally been supposed and the Tories less well.” His brief, but questioning remarks may perhaps serve, then, as a point of departure for a somewhat fuller account of the campaign and a more detailed analysis of the results of the election which returned the longest lived of William IIIs parliaments.

Record‐keepers in the Court of Chancery and their ‘Record’ of Accomplishment in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

This article describes the conflict over authority and fees which came to a head in 1791 between two groups of officials within the court of chancery, the Sworn Clerks and the Six Clerks, and considers how far the recurrent conflict adversely affected the preservation of the court’s records. It gives an account of record-keeping in the context of these clashes and explores the surviving records of chancery equity proceedings in the Public Record Office. Users of these records are alerted that, although voluminous, they are far from complete.