Agriculture

Abstract

The Court of Requests was established in 1493 as an extension of the Privy Council. It handled civil cases, and was specifically designed ‘for the expedition of poore mennys causes’. It was expressly intended to implement Henry VIF’s policy of supporting the lower social classes against the aristocracy. In the words of the Court’s historian, the justice it offered was ‘summary, simple, honest and cheap, as contrasted with a common law procedure which was dilatory, complex, frequently corrupt, and consequently expensive’. Accordingly, the Court became the scene of many actions by tenants against their landlords, actions which were precipitated by the new economic forces of the early and mid-sixteenth century — the fall in the value of money, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the rising demands for expenditure at Court and on ostentation, and the rapidly-growing demand for industrial products and their raw materials. The resulting economic pressures exacerbated relations between landlords and tenants, causing the former to attempt to institute tenurial changes which the latter resisted fiercely, availing themselves of the Court of Requests for this purpose.