Page "Equity (law)" Paragraph 11

This tension grew to an all-time high in the Earl of Oxford ’ s case ( 1615 ), where a judgment of Chief Justice Coke was allegedly obtained by fraud.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Ellesmere, issued a common injunction out of the Chancery prohibiting the enforcement of the common law order.

The two courts became locked in a stalemate, and the matter was eventually referred to the Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon.

Sir Francis, by authority of King James I, upheld the use of the common injunction and concluded that in the event of any conflict between the common law and equity, equity would prevail.

Equity's primacy in England was later enshrined in the Judicature Acts of the 1870s, which also served to fuse the courts of equity and the common law ( although emphatically not the systems themselves ) into one unified court system.