England and Wales
England and Wales is a legal jurisdiction covering England and Wales, two of the four nations of the United Kingdom. "England and Wales" forms the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England and follows a single legal system, known as English law. The devolved National Assembly for Wales was created in 1999 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom under the Government of Wales Act 1998 and provides a degree of self-government in Wales; the powers of the Assembly were expanded by the Government of Wales Act 2006, which allows it to pass its own laws, the Act formally separated the Welsh Government from the Assembly. There is no equivalent body for England, directly governed by the Parliament and the government of the United Kingdom. During the Roman occupation of Britain, the area of present-day England and Wales was administered as a single unit, with the exception of the land to the north of Hadrian's Wall – though the Roman-occupied area varied in extent, for a time extended to the Antonine/Severan Wall.
At that time, most of the native inhabitants of Roman Britain spoke Brythonic languages, were all regarded as Britons, divided into numerous tribes. After the conquest, the Romans administered this region as the province of Britain. Long after the departure of the Romans, the Britons in what became Wales developed their own system of law, first codified by Hywel Dda when he was king of most of present-day Wales. However, after the Norman invasion of Wales in the 11th century, English law came to apply in the parts of Wales conquered by the Normans. In 1283, the English, led by Edward I, with the biggest army brought together in England since the 11th century, conquered the remainder of Wales organised as the Principality of Wales; this was united with the English crown by the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284. This aimed to replace Welsh criminal law with English law. Welsh law continued to be used for civil cases until the annexation of Wales to England in the 16th century; the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 consolidated the administration of all the Welsh territories and incorporated them into the legal system of the Kingdom of England.
Prior to 1746 it was not clear whether a reference to "England" in legislation included Wales, so in 1746 Parliament passed the Wales and Berwick Act. This specified that in all prior and future laws, references to "England" would by default include Wales; the Wales and Berwick Act was repealed in 1967, although the statutory definition of "England" created by that Act still applies for laws passed before 1967. In new legislation since 1967, what was referred to as "England" is now "England and Wales", while references to "England" and "Wales" refer to those political divisions. England and Wales are treated as a single unit for some purposes, because the two form the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England; the continuance of Scots law was guaranteed under the 1706 Treaty of Union that led to the Acts of Union 1707, as a consequence English law—and after 1801, Irish law—continued to be separate. Following the two Acts of Union, Parliament can restrict the effect of its laws to part of the realm, the effect of laws, where restricted, was applied to one or more of the former kingdoms.
Thus, most laws applicable to England applied to Wales. However, Parliament now passes laws applicable to Wales and not to England, a practice, rare before the middle of the 20th century. Examples are the Welsh Language Acts 1967 and 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998. Measures and Acts of the National Assembly for Wales passed since the Government of Wales Act 2006 apply in Wales but not in England. Following the Government of Wales Act, effective since May 2007, the National Assembly for Wales can legislate on matters devolved to it. Following a referendum on 3 March 2011, the Welsh Assembly gained direct law-making powers, without the need to consult Westminster; this was the first time in 500 years that Wales had its own powers to legislate. Each piece of Welsh legislation is known as an Act of the Assembly. For a company to be incorporated in the United Kingdom, its application for registration with Companies House must state "whether the company's registered office is to be situated in England and Wales, in Scotland or in Northern Ireland", which will determine the law applicable to that business entity.
A registered office must be specified as "in Wales" if the company wishes to use a name ending cyfyngedig or cyf, rather than Limited or Ltd. or to avail itself of certain other privileges relating to the official use of the Welsh language. Outside the legal system, the position is mixed; some organisations combine as "England and Wales", others are separate. In sports, cricket has a combined international team administered by the England and Wales Cricket Board, who govern the sport across both nations, whilst football, rugby union, rugby league, the Commonwealth Games and other sports have separate national representative teams for each country. A few Welsh association football clubs, most notably Cardiff City F. C. and Swansea City F. C. play in the English football league system, while The New Saints F. C. which represents places on both sides of the border, plays in the Welsh football league system. Some religious denominations organise on the basis of England and Wales, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, but small denominations, e.g. the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Prior to the disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920, the Anglican churc
Lawyer
A lawyer or attorney is a person who practices law, as an advocate, attorney at law, barrister-at-law, bar-at-law, civil law notary, counselor, counselor at law, chartered legal executive, or public servant preparing and applying law, but not as a paralegal or charter executive secretary. Working as a lawyer involves the practical application of abstract legal theories and knowledge to solve specific individualized problems, or to advance the interests of those who hire lawyers to perform legal services; the role of the lawyer varies across legal jurisdictions, so it can be treated here in only the most general terms. In practice, legal jurisdictions exercise their right to determine, recognized as being a lawyer; as a result, the meaning of the term "lawyer" may vary from place to place. Some jurisdictions have two types of lawyers and solicitors, whilst others fuse the two. A barrister is a lawyer. A solicitor is a lawyer, trained to prepare cases and give advice on legal subjects and can represent people in lower courts.
Both barristers and solicitors have gone through law school, completed the requisite practical training. However, in jurisdictions where there is a split-profession, only barristers are admitted as members of their respective bar association. In Australia, the word "lawyer" can be used to refer to both barristers and solicitors, whoever is admitted as a lawyer of the Supreme Court of a state or territory. In Canada, the word "lawyer" only refers to individuals who have been called to the bar or, in Quebec, have qualified as civil law notaries. Common law lawyers in Canada are formally and properly called "barristers and solicitors", but should not be referred to as "attorneys", since that term has a different meaning in Canadian usage, being a person appointed under a power of attorney. However, in Quebec, civil law advocates call themselves "attorney" and sometimes "barrister and solicitor" in English, all lawyers in Quebec, or lawyers in the rest of Canada when practising in French, are addressed with the honorific title, "Me." or "Maître".
In England and Wales, "lawyer" is used to refer to persons who provide reserved and unreserved legal activities and includes practitioners such as barristers, solicitors, registered foreign lawyers, patent attorneys, trade mark attorneys, licensed conveyancers, public notaries, commissioners for oaths, immigration advisers and claims management services. The Legal Services Act 2007 defines the "legal activities" that may only be performed by a person, entitled to do so pursuant to the Act.'Lawyer' is not a protected title. In Pakistan, the term "Advocate" is used instead of lawyer in The Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973. In India, the term "lawyer" is colloquially used, but the official term is "advocate" as prescribed under the Advocates Act, 1961. In Scotland, the word "lawyer" refers to a more specific group of trained people, it includes advocates and solicitors. In a generic sense, it may include judges and law-trained support staff. In the United States, the term refers to attorneys who may practice law.
It is never used to refer to patent paralegals. In fact, there are statutory and regulatory restrictions on non-lawyers like paralegals practicing law. Other nations tend to have comparable terms for the analogous concept. In most countries civil law countries, there has been a tradition of giving many legal tasks to a variety of civil law notaries and scriveners; these countries do not have "lawyers" in the American sense, insofar as that term refers to a single type of general-purpose legal services provider. It is difficult to formulate accurate generalizations that cover all the countries with multiple legal professions, because each country has traditionally had its own peculiar method of dividing up legal work among all its different types of legal professionals. Notably, the mother of the common law jurisdictions, emerged from the Dark Ages with similar complexity in its legal professions, but evolved by the 19th century to a single dichotomy between barristers and solicitors. An equivalent dichotomy developed between procurators in some civil law countries.
Several countries that had two or more legal professions have since fused or united their professions into a single type of lawyer. Most countries in this category are common law countries, though France, a civil law country, merged its jurists in 1990 and 1991 in response to Anglo-American competition. In countries with fused professions, a lawyer is permitted to carry out all or nearly all the responsibilities listed below. Arguing a client's case before a judge or jury in a court of law is the traditional province of the barrister in England, of advocates in some civil law jurisdictions. However, the boundary between barristers and solicitors has evolved. In England today, the barrister monopoly covers only appellate courts, barristers must compete directly with solicitors in many trial courts. In countries like the United States, that have fused legal professions, there are trial lawyers who specialize in trying cases in court, but trial lawyers do not have a de jure monopoly like barristers.
In some countries, litigants have the option of arguing pro
Escheat
Escheat is a common law doctrine that transfers the real property of a person who died without heirs to the Crown or state. It serves to ensure, it applied to a number of situations where a legal interest in land was destroyed by operation of law, so that the ownership of the land reverted to the superior feudal lord. The term "escheat" derives from the Latin ex-cadere, to "fall-out", via mediaeval French escheoir; the sense is of a feudal estate in land falling-out of the possession by a family into possession by the overlord. In feudal England, escheat referred to the situation where the tenant of a fee died without an heir or committed a felony. In the case of such demise of a tenant-in-chief, the fee reverted to the King's demesne permanently, when it became once again a mere tenantless plot of land, but could be re-created as a fee by enfeoffment to another of the king's followers. Where the deceased had been subinfeudated by a tenant-in-chief, the fee reverted temporarily to the crown for one year and one day by right of primer seisin after which it escheated to the over-lord who had granted it to the deceased by enfeoffment.
From the time of Henry III, the monarchy took particular interest in escheat as a source of revenue. At the Norman Conquest of England all the land of England was claimed as the personal possession of William the Conqueror under allodial title; the monarch thus became the sole "owner" of all the land in the kingdom, a position which persists to the present day. He granted it out to his favoured followers, who thereby became tenants-in-chief, under various contracts of feudal land tenure; such tenures the highest one of "feudal barony", never conferred ownership of land but ownership of rights over it, to say ownership of an estate in land. Such persons are therefore termed "land-holders" or "tenants", not owners. If held, to say by freehold, such holdings were heritable by the holder's legal heir. On the payment of a premium termed feudal relief to the treasury, such heir was entitled to demand re-enfeoffment by the king with the fee concerned. Where no legal heir existed, the logic of the situation was that the fief had ceased to exist as a legal entity, since being tenantless no one was living, enfeoffed with the land, the land was thus technically owned by either the crown or the immediate overlord as ultimus heres.
Logically therefore it was in the occupation of the crown alone, to say in the royal demesne. This was the basic operation of a failure of heirs. Escheat could take place if a tenant was outlawed or convicted of a felony, when the King could exercise the ancient right of wasting the criminal's land for a year and a day, after that the land would return to the lord. Since disavowal of a feudal bond was considered a felony, lords could escheat land from those who refused to be true to their feudal services. On the other hand, there were tenants who were sluggish in performing their duties, while not being outright rebellious against the lord. Remedies in the courts against this sort of thing in Bracton's day, were available, but were considered laborious and ineffectual in compelling the desired performance; the commonest mechanism would be distraint called distress: the lord would seize some chattel, hold it until performance was achieved. This practice had been dealt with in the 1267 Statute of Marlborough.
So, it remained the most common extrajudicial method applied by the lords at the time of Quia Emptores. Thus, under English common law, there were two main ways an escheat could happen: A person's property escheated if he was convicted of a felony. If the person was executed for the crime, his heirs were attainted, i.e. ineligible to inherit. In most common-law jurisdictions, this type of escheat has been abolished outright, for example in the United States under Article 3 § 3 of the United States Constitution, which states that attainders for treason do not give rise to posthumous forfeiture, or "corruption of blood". If a person had no heir to receive their property under a will or under the laws of intestacy any property he owned at death would escheat; this rule has been replaced in most common-law jurisdictions by a similar concept. From the 12th century onward, the Crown appointed escheators to manage escheats and report to the Exchequer, with one escheator per county established by the middle of the 14th century.
Upon the death of a tenant-in-chief, the escheator would be instructed by a writ of diem clausit extremum issued by the king's chancery, to empanel a jury to hold an "inquisition post mortem" to ascertain who the legal heir was, if any, what was the extent of the land held. Thus it would be revealed, it was important for the king to know who the heir was, to assess his personal qualities, since he would thenceforth form a constituent part of the royal army, if he held under military tenure. If there was any doubt, the escheator would sei
Barrister
A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation, their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching the philosophy and history of law, giving expert legal opinions. Barristers are recognised as legal scholars. Barristers are distinguished from solicitors, who have more direct access to clients, may do transactional-type legal work, it is barristers who are appointed as judges, they are hired by clients directly. In some legal systems, including those of Scotland, South Africa, Pakistan, India and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man, the word barrister is regarded as an honorific title. In a few jurisdictions, barristers are forbidden from "conducting" litigation, can only act on the instructions of a solicitor, who performs tasks such as corresponding with parties and the court, drafting court documents. In England and Wales, barristers may seek authorisation from the Bar Standards Board to conduct litigation.
This allows a barrister to practise in a'dual capacity', fulfilling the role of both barrister and solicitor. In some countries with common law legal systems, such as New Zealand and some regions of Australia, lawyers are entitled to practise both as barristers and solicitors, but it remains a separate system of qualification to practise as a barrister. A barrister, who can be considered as a jurist, is a lawyer who represents a litigant as advocate before a court of appropriate jurisdiction. A barrister presents the case before a judge or jury. In some jurisdictions, a barrister receives additional training in evidence law and court practice and procedure. In contrast, a solicitor meets with clients, does preparatory and administrative work and provides legal advice. In this role, he or she may draft and review legal documents, interact with the client as necessary, prepare evidence, manage the day-to-day administration of a lawsuit. A solicitor can provide a crucial support role to a barrister when in court, such as managing large volumes of documents in the case or negotiating a settlement outside the courtroom while the trial continues inside.
There are other essential differences. A barrister will have rights of audience in the higher courts, whereas other legal professionals will have more limited access, or will need to acquire additional qualifications to have such access; as in common law countries in which there is a split between the roles of barrister and solicitor, the barrister in civil law jurisdictions is responsible for appearing in trials or pleading cases before the courts. Barristers have particular knowledge of case law and the skills to "build" a case; when a solicitor in general practice is confronted with an unusual point of law, they may seek the "opinion of counsel" on the issue. In most countries, barristers operate as sole practitioners, are prohibited from forming partnerships or from working as a barrister as part of a corporation. However, barristers band together into "chambers" to share clerks and operating expenses; some chambers grow to be large and sophisticated, have a distinctly corporate feel. In some jurisdictions, they may be employed by firms of solicitors, banks, or corporations as in-house legal advisers.
In contrast and attorneys work directly with the clients and are responsible for engaging a barrister with the appropriate expertise for the case. Barristers have little or no direct contact with their'lay clients' without the presence or involvement of the solicitor. All correspondence, invoices, so on, will be addressed to the solicitor, responsible for the barrister's fees. In court, barristers are visibly distinguished from solicitors by their apparel. For example, in Ireland and Wales, a barrister wears a horsehair wig, stiff collar, a gown. Since January 2008, solicitor advocates have been entitled to wear wigs, but wear different gowns. In many countries the traditional divisions between barristers and solicitors are breaking down. Barristers once enjoyed a monopoly on appearances before the higher courts, but in Great Britain this has now been abolished, solicitor advocates can appear for clients at trial. Firms of solicitors are keeping the most advanced advisory and litigation work in-house for economic and client relationship reasons.
The prohibition on barristers taking instructions directly from the public has been abolished. But, in practice, direct instruction is still a rarity in most jurisdictions because barristers with narrow specializations, or who are only trained for advocacy, are not prepared to provide general advice to members of the public. Barristers have had a major role in trial preparation, including drafting pleadings and reviewing evidence. In some areas of law, still the case. In other areas, it is common for the barrister to receive the brief from the instructing solicitor to represent a client at trial only a day or two before the proceeding. Part of the reason for this is cost. A barrister is entitled to a'brief fee' when a brief is delivered, this represents the bulk of her/his fee in relation to any trial, they are usually entitled to a'refresher' for each day of the trial after the first. But if a case is settled before the trial, the barrister is not needed and the brief fee would be wast
Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, with a population of 40,302, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Ebble and Bourne. The city is 20 miles from Southampton and 30 miles from Bath. Salisbury is near the edge of Salisbury Plain. Salisbury Cathedral was north of the city at Old Sarum. Following the cathedral's relocation, a settlement grew up around it which received a city charter in 1227 as New Sarum, which continued to be its official name until 2009 when Salisbury City Council was established. Salisbury railway station is an interchange between the West of England Main Line and the Wessex Main Line. Stonehenge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is 8 miles northwest of Salisbury; the name Salisbury, first recorded around the year 900 as Searoburg, is a partial translation of the Roman Celtic name Sorviodūnum. The Brittonic suffix -dūnon, meaning "fortress", was replaced by its Old English equivalent -burg; the first part of the name is of obscure origin. The form "Sarum" is a Latinization of a medieval abbreviation for Middle English Sarisberie.
The two names for the city and Sarum, are humorously alluded to in a 1928 limerick from Punch: The ambiguous pronunciation was used in the following limerick: Salisbury appeared in the Welsh Chronicle of the Britons as Caer-Caradog, Caer-Gradawc and Caer-Wallawg. Cair-Caratauc, one of the 28 British cities listed in the History of the Britons, has been identified with Salisbury; the hilltop at Old Sarum lies near the Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Avebury and shows some signs of early settlement. It commanded a salient between the River Bourne and the Hampshire Avon, near a crossroads of several early trade-routes. During the Iron Age, sometime between 600 and 300 BC, a hillfort was constructed around it; the Romans left it in the hands of an allied tribe. At the time of the Saxon invasions, Old Sarum fell to King Cynric of Wessex in 552. Preferring settlements in bottomland, such as nearby Wilton, the Saxons ignored Old Sarum until the Viking invasions led King Alfred to restore its fortifications.
Along with Wilton, however, it was abandoned by its residents to be sacked and burned by the Dano-Norwegian king Sweyn Forkbeard in 1003. It subsequently became the site of Wilton's mint. Following the Norman invasion of 1066, a motte-and-bailey castle was constructed by 1070; the castle was held directly by the Norman kings. In 1075 the Council of London established Herman as the first bishop of Salisbury, uniting his former sees of Sherborne and Ramsbury into a single diocese which covered the counties of Dorset and Berkshire. In 1055, Herman had planned to move his seat to Malmesbury. Herman and his successor, Saint Osmund, began the construction of the first Salisbury cathedral, though neither lived to see its completion in 1092. Osmund served as Lord Chancellor of England; the cathedral was consecrated on 5 April 1092 but suffered extensive damage in a storm, traditionally said to have occurred only five days later. Bishop Roger was a close ally of Henry I: he served as viceroy during the king's absence in Normandy and directed, along with his extended family, the royal administration and exchequer.
He refurbished and expanded Old Sarum's cathedral in the 1110s and began work on a royal palace during the 1130s, prior to his arrest by Henry's successor, Stephen. After this arrest, the castle at Old Sarum was allowed to fall into disrepair, but the sheriff and castellan continued to administer the area under the king's authority. Bishop Hubert Walter was instrumental in the negotiations with Saladin during the Third Crusade, but he spent little time in his diocese prior to his elevation to archbishop of Canterbury; the brothers Herbert and Richard Poore succeeded him and began planning the relocation of the cathedral into the valley immediately. Their plans were approved by King Richard I but delayed: Herbert was first forced into exile in Normandy in the 1190s by the hostility of his archbishop Walter and again to Scotland in the 1210s owing to royal hostility following the papal interdiction against King John; the secular authorities were incensed, according to tradition, owing to some of the clerics debauching the castellan's female relations.
In the end, the clerics were refused permission to reenter the city walls following their rogations and processions. This caused Peter of Blois to describe the church as "a captive within the walls of the citadel like the ark of God in the profane house of Baal", he advocated Let us descend into the plain! There are rich fields and fertile valleys abounding in the fruits of the earth and watered by the living stream. There is a seat for the Virgin Patroness of our church, his successor and brother Richard Poore moved the cathedral to a new town on his estate at Veteres Sarisberias in 1220. The site was at "Myrifield", a meadow near the confluence of the River Nadder and the Hampshire Avon, it was first known as "New Sarum" or New Saresbyri. The town was laid out on a grid. Work on the new cathedral building, the present Salisbury Cathedral, began in 1221
Thomas Richardson (judge)
Sir Thomas Richardson was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622. He was Speaker of the House of Commons for this parliament, he was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. Richardson was born at Hardwick, Depwade Hundred and was baptised there on 3 July 1569, the son of William Richardson whose family were said to be descended from the younger son of a Norman family, who moved to county Durham in about 1100. Other branches of the family included the Richardsons of the Briary in county Durham, the Richardsons of Glanbrydan Park and Pantygwydr, Wales, he was educated at Norwich School. On 5 March 1587 he was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 28 January 1595. In 1605 he was deputy steward to the dean and chapter of Norwich, around which time he built Honingham Hall, he was subsequently recorder of Bury St. Edmunds and Norwich. In 1614, he was Lent Reader at Lincoln's Inn, on 13 October of the same year became serjeant-at-law.
At about the same time he was made chancellor to the queen. In 1621, Richardson was elected Member of Parliament for St Albans; when parliament met on 30 January 1621, he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. The excuses which he made before accepting this office appear to have been more than formal, for an eye-witness reports that he'wept downright.' On 25 March 1621 he was knighted at Whitehall when he brought King James congratulations of the commons upon the recent censure of Sir Giles Mompesson. In the chair he proved a veritable King Log and his term of office was marked by the degradation of Bacon, he was not re-elected to parliament in the next election. On 20 February 1625 Richardson was made king's serjeant. On 28 November 1626 he succeeded Sir Henry Hobart as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, after a vacancy of nearly a year, his advancement was said to have cost him his second marriage. He judged on 13 November 1628, that it was illegal to use the rack to elicit confession from Felton, the murderer of Duke of Buckingham's.
His opinion had the concurrence of his colleagues and marks a significant point in the history of English criminal jurisprudence. In the following December he presided at the trial of three of the Jesuits arrested in Clerkenwell, secured the acquittal of two of them by requiring proof, not forthcoming, of their orders. In the same year he took part in the careful review of the law of constructive treason This arose from the case of Hugh Pine, charged with that crime for speaking words that were derogatory to the king's majesty; the result of Richardsons's review was to limit the offence to cases of imagining the king's death. He concurred in the guarded and somewhat evasive opinion on the extent of privilege of parliament which the king elicited from the judges after the turbulent scenes which preceded the dissolution of parliament on 4 March 1629, he was as lenient as he could be when he imposed a fine of £500 without imprisonment in the case of Richard Chambers, his agreement with harsh sentences passed upon Alexander Leighton and William Prynne may have been dictated by timidity, there contrast with the tenderness which he showed Henry Sherfield, the iconoclastic bencher of Lincoln's Inn.
Richardson was advanced to the chief-justiceship of the king's bench on 24 October 1631, served on the western circuit. He was not a puritan but in Lent 1632 he made and order, at the instance of the Somerset magistrates, for suppressing the'wakes' or Sunday revels, which were a fertile source of crime in the county, he directed the order to be read in church and this brought him into conflict with Laud, who sent for him and told him it was the king's pleasure he should rescind the order. Richardson ignored this instruction until the king, he at the ensuing summer Assizes, laid the matter before the justices and grand jury, professing his inability to comply with the royal mandate on the ground that the order had been made by the joint consent of the whole bench, was in fact a mere confirmation and enlargement of similar orders made in the county since the time of Queen Elizabeth, all which he substantiated from the county records. This caused him to be cited before the council and transferred to the Essex circuit.'I am like,' he muttered as he left the council board,'to be choked with the archbishop's lawn sleeves.'
Richardson died at his house in Chancery Lane on 4 February 1635 and was buried in the north aisle of the choir of Westminster Abbey, beneath a marble monument. There is a bust by Hubert Le Sueur. Richardson was a capable lawyer and a weak man, much addicted to flouts and jeers.'Let him have the Book of Martyrs' he said, when the question whether Prynne should be allowed the use of books was before the court. He could make a caustic jest at his own expense.'You see now’ he dryly remarked, as he avoided a missile aimed at him by a condemned felon by stooping low,'if I had been an upright judge I had been slain.' He possessed some polite learning, which caused John Taylor, the water poet, to dedicate to him one of the impressions of his Superbiae Flagellum. Richardson married twice, his first wife, Suffolk. She was buried at St. Andrew's, Holborn, on 13 June 1624, his second wife, married at St Giles in the Fields, Middlesex, on 14 December 1626, was Elizabeth widow of Sir John Ashburnham and daughter of Sir Thomas Beaumont of Stoughton, Leicestershire.
She was the first Duke of Buckingham's maternal second cousin once removed. Richardson had twelve children by his first wife, of whom four daughters and
Courts of England and Wales
The Courts of England and Wales, supported administratively by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, are the civil and criminal courts responsible for the administration of justice in England and Wales. The United Kingdom does not have a single unified legal system—England and Wales has one system, Scotland another, Northern Ireland a third. There are exceptions to this rule. Additionally, the Military Court Service has jurisdiction over all members of the armed forces of the United Kingdom in relation to offences against military law; the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Crown Court, the County Court, the magistrates' courts are administered by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is the highest appeal court in all cases in England and Wales. Before the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 this role was held by the House of Lords; the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal for devolution matters, a role held by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The Supreme Court has a separate administration from the other courts of England and Wales, its administration is under a Chief Executive, appointed by the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Senior Courts of England and Wales were created by the Judicature Acts as the "Supreme Court of Judicature", it was renamed the "Supreme Court of England and Wales" in 1981, again to the "Senior Courts of England and Wales" by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. It consists of the following courts: Court of Appeal High Court of Justice Crown CourtThe Senior Courts of England and Wales, along with the Tribunals and other courts, are administered and supported by HM Courts and Tribunals Service; the Court of Appeal deals only with appeals from other tribunals. The Court of Appeal consists of two divisions: the Civil Division hears appeals from the High Court and County Court and certain superior tribunals, while the Criminal Division may only hear appeals from the Crown Court connected with a trial on indictment.
Its decisions are binding on all courts, including itself, apart from the Supreme Court. The High Court of Justice functions both as a civil court of first instance and a criminal and civil appellate court for cases from the subordinate courts, it consists of three divisions: the Chancery and the Family divisions. The divisions of the High Court are not separate courts, but have somewhat separate procedures and practices adapted to their purposes. Although particular kinds of cases will be assigned to each division depending on their subject matter, each division may exercise the jurisdiction of the High Court. However, beginning proceedings in the wrong division may result in a costs penalty; the formation of The Business and Property Courts of England & Wales within the High Court was announced in March 2017, launched in London in July 2017. The courts would in future administer the specialist jurisdictions, administered in the Queen's Bench Division under the names of the Admiralty Court, the Commercial Court, the Technology & Construction Court, under the Chancery Division's lists for Business and Insolvency, Intellectual Property and Trusts and Probate.
The Crown Court is a criminal court of both original and appellate jurisdiction which in addition handles a limited amount of civil business both at first instance and on appeal. It was established by the Courts Act 1971, it replaced the assizes whereby High Court judges would periodically travel around the country hearing cases, quarter sessions which were periodic county courts. The Old Bailey is the unofficial name of London's most famous criminal court, now part of the Crown Court, its official name is the "Central Criminal Court". The Crown Court hears appeals from magistrates' courts; the Crown Court is the only court in England and Wales that has the jurisdiction to try cases on indictment and when exercising such a role it is a superior court in that its judgments cannot be reviewed by the Administrative Court of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court. The Crown Court is an inferior court in respect of the other work it undertakes, viz. inter alia, appeals from the magistrates’ courts and other tribunals.
The most common subordinate courts in England and Wales are County Court Family Court Magistrates' courts Youth courts The County Court is a national court with a purely civil jurisdiction, sitting in 92 different towns and cities across England and Wales. As from 22 April 2014 there has been a single County Court for England and Wales where there was a series of courts; the County Court is so named after the ancient sheriff's court held in each county, but it has no connection with it nor indeed was the jurisdiction of the county courts based on counties. A County Court hearing is presided over by either a district or circuit judge and, except in a small minority of cases such as civil actions against the police, the judge sits alone as trier of fact and law without assistance from a jury; the old county courts' divorce and family jurisdiction was passed on 22 April 2014 to the single Family Court. Until unification in 2014, county courts were local courts in the sense that each one has an area over
