ABSTRACT
This article considers the procedural design of the early common law action mort d’ancestor, introduced in 1176. It first considers how the action was developed to provide swift justice while also allowing the defendant (or ‘tenant’) adequate opportunities to appear in court. It then examines the impact of this design on litigation at the eyre from 1198 to 1228. The interaction of the procedural rules of the action with the duration of the justices’ county visitations meant that, before 1215, a significant number of cases suffered postponements to later destinations on the justices’ circuits. This gives further context to Magna Carta’s demands for efficient local justice. Matters improved in the reign of Henry III, as county visitations tended to be longer. However, this was not the case across the whole country. Together with some localized experiments in procedure, litigants’ experiences of early common law litigation may therefore have varied considerably.
William Eves, Development and Experimentation in the Early Common Law Forms of Action: The Procedural Rules of Mort d’Ancestor and their Effect on Litigation in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries, Journal of Legal History. Published online: 8 July 2025.
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