When a case of prerogative was referred to the chancellor in the reign of Edward III., he was required to grant such remedy as should be consonant to honesty (_honestas_). And honesty, conscience and equity were said to be the fundamental principles of the court. The early chancellors were ecclesiastics, and under their influence not only moral principles, where these were not regarded by the common law, but also the equitable principles of the Roman law were introduced into English jurisprudence. Between this point and the time when equity became settled as a portion of the legal system, having fixed principles of its own, various views of its nature seem to have prevailed. For a long time it was thought that precedents could have no place in equity, inasmuch as it professed in each case to do that which was just; and we find this view maintained by common lawyers after it had been abandoned by the professors of equity themselves. G. Spence, in his book on the _Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery_, quotes a case in the reign of Charles II., in which chief justice Vaughan said: "I wonder to hear of citing of precedents in matter of equity, for if there be equity in a case, that equity is an universal truth, and there can be no precedent in it; so that in any precedent that can be produced, if it be the same with this case, the reason and equity is the same in itself; and if the precedent be not the same case with this it is not to be cited." But the lord keeper Bridgeman answered: "Certainly precedents are very necessary and useful to us, for in them we may find the reasons of the equity to guide us, and besides the authority of those who made them is much to be regarded. We shall suppose they did it upon great consideration and weighing of the matter, and it would be very strange and very ill if we should disturb and set aside what has been the course for a long series of times and ages."