There were writs of
debt and of covenant; there were writs of trespass for forcible
injuries to the plaintiff's person, or to property in his
possession, and so on. But these writs were only issued for the
actions which were known to the law, and without a writ the court
had no authority to try a case. In the time of Edward I. there
were but few of such actions. The cases in which you could
recover money of another fell into a small number of groups, for
each of which there was a particular form of suing and stating
your claim.
These forms had ceased to be adequate. Thus there were many cases
which did not exactly fall within the definition of a trespass,
but for which it was proper that a remedy should be furnished. In
order to furnish a remedy, the first thing to be done was to
furnish a writ. Accordingly, the famous statute of 13 Edward I.,
c. 24, authorized the office from which the old writs issued to
frame new ones in cases similar in principle to those for which
writs were found, and requiring like remedy, but not exactly
falling within the scope of the writs already in use.
Thus writs of trespass on the case began to make their
appearance; that is, writs stating a ground of complaint [275] to
a trespass, but not quite amounting to a trespass as it had been
sued for in the older precedents.
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