ABSTRACT
The law exists to regulate behaviour. Local customs were enforced by the local courts so the law varied across England, meaning that the law of the land was decentralised. The King, and later the Lord Chancellor, would deal with such petitions by referring them to the King's Council and other justices. The Lord Chancellor was also known as the keeper of the King's conscience and carried out administrative and judicial tasks on behalf of the King. So the state of affairs was that there were two parallel systems at work; one was the common law system through the writ system, and the other was the equitable system. The rigid writ system was eventually abolished by the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854. The Judicature Acts led to the joining together of the two systems so that now all courts can apply both the common law and equity.
