record of proceedings below," and although new proofs could be proffered, 100 
it is apparent from the writings of early decretists that the review is largely 
concerned with errors of law in the original proceedings. In contrast with 
this system, the King's law in England was administered, not on a perpendicular, 
but on a horizontal plane—on the principle of co-ordinated or particular 
jurisdiction. The ecclesiastical appeal was a difficult thing to adapt, since it 
was by definition an invocation of a higher court to pronounce on the sentence 
of an inferior court, and in England a superior-inferior relationship existed 
only as between King's courts and local tribunals. This condition probably 
favored the early growth of a review jurisdiction there, but the royal courts 
themselves were not arranged in hierarchy, although, as we have noticed, 
certain distinctions inter se appear to have been tacitly observed. The germ of 
an hierarchical idea is implicit in the proceedings coram rege, but as long as 
that jurisdiction was chiefly original the idea was dormant. It is not to have 
an existing judgment bettered (the notion behind the transit upon appeal), 
but for the best available judgment ab initio that men have cases transferred 
from an eyre to be heard by the King himself. The cases in error from the 
King's courts in Ireland furnish the earliest trace of a transit to a superior 
authority within the royal structure; and with the assumption of an appellate 
function in Council and later King's Bench a locus of appeal in the sense of 
the canon law comes into being. 101 Once reviewing authority operated consistently 
upon a written record (post 1250) the conditions were present for 
selective poaching in the preserves of ecclesiastical law—assignment of error, 
stay of judgment, and review as of course. From the sources at our disposal 
it appears that this phase of common law development did not get well under 
way until the reign of Edward I, and although direct proof is wanting, it is 
conceivable that this quickening of interest in review jurisdiction may have 
been stimulated by the first-hand experience of English sovereigns with the 
Gascon appeals and the expansion of the French King's authority in this 
field, 102 a development to which the canon law made definite contribution. 
Long before the impact of the canonists' learning about their ordinary rem- 
09 Decretum, Causa 11, q. VI, c. 41, diet. Grat. 
§ 21; Incerti auctoris ordo iudiciarius, XX 
("Debet enim allegations utriusque partis 
redigere in actis quae appellans debet offere illi 
ad quern appellavit"). 
100 Summa Rufini 222 ("Qui etiam audire debet 
allegationes partium, sive illae quae in priori 
iudicio factae sunt sive alias denuo afferre voluerint"); 
Tancred, Ordo judiciarius, tit. 5, § 12; 
Deer. Greg., lib. 11, tit. XX, c. 17. 
101 The later statements that the writ of error 
is an original and that it is a commission to try 
errors, and that the record is tried, are the results 
of pressure of the principle of co-ordinate 
power (cf. 2 Tidd, Practice of the Court of 
King's Bench, 1134). This may have had something 
to do with the failure to adopt canonical 
rules about receiving new evidence on appeal. 
The sanctity of the verdict is obviously a late 
rationalization, since the thirteenth-century 
certification procedure shows the verdict was 
open to alteration. 
102 i n f rai p. x lvi.