The chancellor having the great seal in his custody, the council usually borrowed its process from his court. This was returnable into chancery even where the business was depending before the council. Nor were the two jurisdictions less intimately allied in their character, each being of an equitable nature; and equity, as then practised, being little else than innovation and encroachment on the course of law. This part, long since the most important of the chancellor's judicial function, cannot be traced beyond the time of Richard II., when, the practice of feoffments to uses having been introduced, without any legal remedy to secure the cestui que use, or usufructuary, against his feoffees, the court of chancery undertook to enforce this species of contract by process of its own.[355] Such was the nature of the king's ordinary council in itself, as the organ of his executive sovereignty, and such the jurisdiction which it habitually exercised. But it is also to be considered in its relation to the parliament, during whose session, either singly or in conjunction with the lords' house, it was particularly conspicuous. The great officers of state, whether peers or not, the judges, the king's serjeant, and attorney-general, were, from the earliest times, as the latter still continue to be, summoned by special writs to the upper house. But while the writ of a peer runs ad tractandum nobiscum et cum cæteris prælatis, magnatibus et proceribus, that directed to one of the judges is only ad tractandum nobiscum et cum cæteris de consilio nostro; and the seats of the latter are upon the woolsacks at one extremity of the house. In the reigns of Edward I. and II. the council appear to have been the regular advisers of the king in passing laws to which the houses of parliament had assented. The preambles of most statutes during this period express their concurrence. Thus the statute Westm. I. is said to be the act of the king by his council, and by the assent of archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, and all the commonalty of the realm being hither summoned. The statute of escheators, 29 E. I., is said to be agreed by the council, enumerating their names, all whom appear to be judges or public officers. Still more striking conclusions are to be drawn from the petitions addressed to the council by both houses of parliament. In the eighth of Edward II. there are four petitions from the commons to the king and his council, one from the lords alone, and one in which both appear to have joined. Later parliaments of the same reign present us with several more instances of the like nature. Thus in 18 E. II. a petition begins, "To our lord the king, and to his council, the archbishops, bishops, prelates, earls, barons, and others of the commonalty of England, show," &c.[356]