ABSTRACT
In the Tudor period, many different types of law pertained – common law, statute law, law of equity, civil law, canon law, manorial custom. These laws were administered in a plethora of courts, which often had parallel and rival jurisdic-tions: common law courts, Privy Council and Prerogative Courts, Admiralty Courts, ecclesiastical courts and parliament itself at the centre. Additionally there were Regional Councils, Quarter Sessions, Assizes, Hundred Courts, Manorial Courts, Borough Courts and a whole variety of ecclesiastical courts in the counties and dioceses. The precise boundaries between the juridiction of, for example, the Justice of the Peace and the Assizes were blurred so that, with certain exceptions, the same types of case might appear before either. The eccle-siastical and the common law courts each claimed jurisdiction in some of the same areas.
