The Later Sixteenth Century

This chapter offers a more detailed assessment of the status of conscience in equity in the later sixteenth century, roughly to the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1603. One of the reason for choosing the late sixteenth century as a site for exposition is that, by this time, the Reformation was solidly established in England. Concomitantly, as Harold Berman points out, the Reformation suggested a new kind of relationship between the civil and the spiritual. As Chancery law became more systematized and rule-governed, and conscience became more a matter of internal, individual dialogue, a divergence would have developed. A wide-ranging recent treatment of conscience in Elizabethan England is that of Lowell Gallagher, who confronts head-on the paradox of conscience. A survey of equity cases from the period collected by W. H. Bryson, cases concerning equity and the courts of equity 1550-1660, reveals many references to conscience in contexts with which people are familiar.