The Sanctity of Contracts in English Law - College of Social ...

The Influence of the Ecclesiastical Courts 7formative period in English law, there was an insistenceby canon lawyers that it was a religious duty to keepfaith, and notwithstanding the discouragements of theConstitutions of Clarendon the influence of theecclesiastical conception of breaches of contracts musthave been considerable at a time when the foundationsof contract law were being discussed.CONTKACTS IN THE COURT OF CHANCERYDuring this same medieval interregnum, in theabsence of an adequate common law remedy forbreach of contract, the Court of Chancery, as wellas the ecclesiastical courts, was approached bypetitioners seeking redress for breaches of contract;and as the great majority of the medieval chancellorswere ecclesiastics it was only natural for them tofollow much the same lines as the Church courts. 11Accordingly they offered remedies in cases where goodfaith and honest dealing demanded enforcement ofpromises. Sir William Holdsworth observes 12 thatthis might well have brought the whole of the law ofcontract under the jurisdiction of the Court ofChancery, had not the common law courts awakened11 See Plnoknett, op. cit. at p. 627. For a contrary view, seeAmes, Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Vol.Ill, p. 309, where it is stated that there seema to be noreason to suppose that the chancellors, in giving relief, wereinfluenced, even unconsciously, by any recollection of ecclesiasticaltraditions in regard to fidei laesio. " It was soobviously just that one who had intentionally misled anotherto his detriment should make good the loss, that we neednot go further afield for an explanation of the chancellor'sreadiness to give a remedy upon such parol agreements."Op. cit.12 History of English Law, Vol. 1 (7th ed.), p. 456.