Legality of Judgments on Scire Facias given in King's Bench

Sir Edward Coke’s had asserted (4 Inst. 79) that, in cases such as scire facias cases originating in Chancery and subsequently transferred to King’s Bench for jury trial, the record should be transferred back to Chancery for judgment.

See page 79 of the Fourt Part of Coke's Institutes

However the justices of the King’s Bench and the Lord Chancellor ruled unanimously in Jefferson v. Dawson (1 Mod. 29) that, once the report had been transmitted to the Court of King’s Bench, the judgment should be given in that court. This case was also reported by Sir Edmund Saunders as part of Jefferson v. Morton and others (2 Saund. 23, on page 26). This case was decided back during the reign of Charles II, back in the 17th century. See the report of Jefferson v. Dawson at page 29 in the first volume of Modern Reports. See also the same case reported at page 25 in the second volume of Sir Edmund Saunders’s Reports (5th edtion, 1824)

The principle decided by the Court of King’s Bench (and approved also by the Lord Chancellor of the day) was affirmed at the commencement of the reign of King George I, at the beginning of the 18th century, in The Queen against Aires. See the Sixth Exception on page 260 of the 10th volume of Modern Reports (case 10 Mod. 258)

The Court of Queen’s Bench returned to the question in 1846, in Bynner v. The Queen. They re-affirmed that the practice followed in scire facias actions such as R. v. Arkwright, where the case was transferred to the Court of King’s Bench for jury trial, and judgment delivered there, was indeed proper practice, notwithstanding the assertion of Sir Edward Coke (4 Inst. 79, see above). But this judgment merely reaffirmed what had been decided nearly two centuries beforehand, and supplied extra authority, produced by a search of medieval patent rolls.