8 - Thomas Kebell as an advocate

Summary

The heart of the English legal system in Thomas Kebell's day, and for centuries afterwards, was the great hall of the palace of Westminster. Provincial courts there were in plenty, but just as the lawyers who worked them were part of a profession centred on the inns of court, so litigation in them was increasingly subject to the central royal courts. Rebuilt less than a century before Kebell read for the bar, Westminster Hall housed the chancery, the king's bench and the common pleas. The exchequer met in a room off the north entrance, near which was the Exchequer Chamber, and buildings around were to house the family of courts that grew up by the middle of the sixteenth century; already the Star Chamber was in use for judicial and conciliar discussions and hearings. In the hall proper, common pleas had the draughtiest position, against the western wall towards the northern end; king's bench filled the south-eastern and chancery the south-western half of the dais at the upper end of the hall.

Each court was arranged in a similar fashion. King's bench, for example, occupied the three southern bays of the hall, and from the western wall to the centre where stood the king's marble chair, which the chancellor, and possibly the chief justice, used on formal occasions. The judges sat on a raised bench some twenty-seven feet long against the southern wall, with the royal arms painted above them and a canopy overhead; over the canopy stood Richard II's statues of the kings of England, watching the court below.