Earl of Oxford's case

rdf:langString Earl of Oxford's case

rdf:langString Earl of Oxford’s case

rdf:langString Gargoyle of Benedict Spinola, who Magdalene College, Cambridge believed had cheated them out of their land

rdf:langString Court of Chancery

rdf:langString Equity, law

rdf:langString Earl of Oxford's case (1615) 21 ER 485 is a foundational case for the common law world, that held equity (equitable principle) takes precedence over the common law. The Lord Chancellor held: "The Cause why there is Chancery is, for that Mens Actions are so divers[e] and infinite, that it is impossible to make any general Law which may aptly meet with every particular Act, and not fail in some Circumstances." The judgment stresses that the legal position for chancery (equity) is tempered to dealing with voids (lacunae) in the common law, a principle regularly asserted in the courts of appeal i.e. "equity follows the law", one of the maxims of equity which taken together impose many limits on the eligibility of cases and applicants. The King decreed on the advice of the Attorneys General that if there was a conflict between the common law and equity, equity would prevail. Equity's primacy in England was later enshrined in the Judicature Acts in 1873 and 1875, which also served to fuse the courts of equity and the common law (although emphatically not the systems themselves) into one unified court system.