Court of Requests

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The Court of Requests comprised a minor court of the king's council in England, under the presidency of the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal.

It may have originated an Order-in-Council of 1390 directing the lords of the council to form a committee to examine the petitions of the humble people. It had jurisdiction chiefly in matters of equity, and owing to the small expenses of procedure it grew in popularity, especially for cases not of sufficient importance to bring into the Court of Chancery itself.

Under Thomas Cardinal Wolsey the court became fixed permanently at Whitehall. The judges of the court used the style "masters of requests". In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Court had two masters ordinary and two masters extraordinary. In James I's reign the Court maintained four masters ordinary. In Henry VIII's reign the judges of the court had ceased to be privy councillors, and towards the end of Elizabeth's reign the court incurred the hostility of the common law courts, as having neither a statutory nor prescriptive title to jurisdiction. Notwithstanding a decision in 1598 as to the illegality of its jurisdiction, and subsequent decisions to the same effect in the reigns of James I and Charles I, it continued to flourish until the suppression of the Star Chamber in 1640 virtually put an end to it. Although it sat until 1642, and masters of requests were appointed even after the Restoration, it ceased to exercise judicial functions.

There were also courts of requests or, as they were sometimes called, courts of conscience, established in London in the reign of Henry VIII. with jurisdiction in matters of debt under forty shillings. These courts were extended in the reigns of George I and George II to various places in England, but an act of 1846 (County Courts Act) abolished them and established in their place the tribunal of the county court.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.