William Blackstone

The king's own courts were then itinerant, being kept in the king's palace, and removing with his household in those royal progresses which he continually made.

[V]ictory is obtained if either champion proves recreant, that is, yields, and pronounces the horrible word of craven; a word of disgrace and obloquy rather than of any determinate meaning. But a horrible word it indeed is to the vanquished champion; since, as a punishment to him for forfeiting the land of his principal by pronouncing that shameful word, he is condemned as a recreant amittere liberam legem, that is, to become infamous, and not to be accounted liber et legalis homo; being supposed by the event to be proved forsworn, and therefore never to be put upon a jury or admitted as a witness in any cause.

And however flimzey this title, and those of William Rufus [William II of England] and Stephen of Blois [Stephen, King of England], may appear at this distance to us, after the law of descents hath now been settled for so many centuries, they were sufficient to puzzle the understandings of our brave, but unlettered, ancestors.

The trial by jury is the Palladium of our civil rights.

Spoliation is an injury done by one clerk or incumbent to another, in taking the fruits of his benefice without any right thereunto, but under a pretended title. It is remedied by a decree to account for the profits so taken. […] [A] patron first presents A to a benefice, who is instituted and inducted thereto; and then, upon pretence of a vacancy, the same patron presents B to the same living, and he also obtains institution and induction. Now if A disputes the fact of the vacancy, then that clerk who is kept out of the profits of the living, whichever it may be, may sue the other in the spiritual court for spoliation, or taking the profits of his benefice.

Every confinement of the person is an imprisonment, whether it be in a common prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.

In this case, the law remits him to his antient and more certain right [...]

The whole of this process is denominated the pleading; in the several stages of which it must be carefully observed, not to depart or vary from the title or defence, which the party has once insisted on. For this (which is called a departure in pleading) might occasion endless altercation.

[…] the law allows an extrajudicial remedy, yet that does not exclude the ordinary course of justice: […] I may either abate a nusance by my own authority, or call upon the law to do it for me: […]

And in the case of a deficiency of assets, all the general legacies must abate proportionably, in order to pay the debts; but a specific legacy (of a piece of plate, a horse, or the like) is not to abate at all, or allow any thing by way of abatement, unless there be not sufficient without it.