ABSTRACT
The early decades of the seventeenth century did witness significant developments relating to the context of Chancery as a court of conscience. Most obviously, in the Coke-Ellesmere confrontation over the role of Chancery there was a formal challenge to the court's jurisdiction, which called forth some reflection on the part of its partisans. This chapter addresses the conscience of equity roughly from James Forsyth's accession in 1603 to about 1640, when the civil order was coming adrift. It focuses on the legal commentators on equity and conscience. William Perkins identifies two related aspects of public equity. One is the moderation of the law directly, the other respects, all the public actions of a man's life. William Ames tends to emphasize the dissonance of legal rules and the dictates of conscience. One might expect the most obvious source of information about the conscience of equity to be the chancellors or keepers themselves.
