We regard an action of Contract as an action to prevent or compensate for a breach of a promise an action of Tort as an action to to punish or compensate for a wrong, such as assault or defamation, which has not any necessary connection with a promise.

The common law of chattels, that is to say, the law ultimately adopted by the King's courts for the regulation of disputes about the ownership and possession of goods, was, to be a substantial extent, a by-product of that new procedure which had been mainly introduced to perfect the feudal scheme of land law.

It is true, that a Law of Contract based on causae will always be an arbitrary and inelastic law but it is a kind of law with which some great nations are satisfied at the present day.

Whatever else the Norman Conquest may or may not have done, it made the old haphazard state of legal affairs forever impossible.

The man who has been wounded by a chance arrow must not shoot at sight the first man he happens to meet.

But then a daring evasion by a leading conveyancer, known as the Lease and Release, received judicial sanction and commenced a successful career of more than 200 years. The Lease and Release, attributed to Serjeant Moore, was based on the fact that the Statute of Inrolments did not apply to terms of years.

It may be that the requirement of a preliminary approval by the Grand Jury, of all accusations of a serious nature, justified the boast that a man was presumed to be innocent until he was 'found' guilty but that presumption certainly ceased to have practical application, so soon as the Grand Jury had returned a 'true bill'.

The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took place chiefly between 1150 and 1250, must be shared between the officials of the royal Chancery, who framed new forms, and the royal judges, who either allowed them or quashed them.