V. _Erroneous Views._ In the reign of Edward I. the real motive of this chapter of Magna Charta—so quickly had the organization of the law courts progressed—had already been lost sight of. The day of wandering common pleas, such as that of Richard d’Anesty, had been long forgotten. Some litigants of Edward’s time had, however, a different grievance of their own, connected with the hearing of their suits. The Court of Exchequer was willing, for an adequate consideration, to place its specially potent machinery, devised originally for the king’s exclusive use, at the disposal of private creditors, thus treating “common pleas” as “exchequer pleas.” Ordinary debtors, summoned as defendants before the _barones scaccarii_, were subjected to harsher treatment than they would have experienced elsewhere. It was not unnatural that defendants who found themselves thus hustled should read the words of Magna Carta relative to “common pleas” as precisely suited to their own case. They made this mistake the more readily as the original motive had been forgotten. The Charter was thus read as preventing the stationary Court of Exchequer (not the constantly moving King’s Bench) from hearing ordinary suits. This erroneous view received legislative sanction. The _Articuli super cartas_ in 1300 declared that no common pleas should thenceforth be held in the Exchequer “contrary to the form of the Great Charter.”[545] ----- Footnote 545: See 28 Edward I. c. 4. Many previous attempts had been made to keep common pleas out of the Exchequer _e.g._ the writs of 56 Henry III. and 5 Edward I. (cited Madox, II. 73-4) the so-called statute of Rhuddlan (12 Edward I., see _Statutes of Realm_, I. 70). Madox also (II. 73-4) takes the erroneous view that c. 17 of the Great Charter relates to the Exchequer; so does Mr. Bigelow (_History of Procedure_, 130–1), who goes further astray by explaining the point of the grievance as the difficulty of getting speedy justice at the Exchequer, because the barons refused to sit after their fiscal business had been finished, at the Easter and Michaelmas sessions. This is an error: the Barons of Exchequer made no difficulty about hearing pleas: quite the contrary. Plaintiffs were equally eager to purchase the writs which they were keen to sell: it was only defendants (debtors) who objected to the rapid and stringent procedure for enforcing payment adopted by this efficient court. The sheriffs and others waiting to render accounts before the Exchequer also protested against the congestion of business produced at the Exchequer by the eagerness of litigants who pressed there for justice. See Madox, II. 73. Plaintiffs had no reason to complain. -----