KING'S BENCH, COURT OF, is descended from the court held coram rege when it was part of that undifferentiated Curia Regis which was still performing legislative and executive as well as judicial functions. It was a court to hear cases which concerned the king, or cases affecting great persons privileged to be tried only before the king himself. If the king was absent abroad, such cases were heard coram consilio nostro. It was also a court to correct the errors and defaults of all other courts, and after the close of the civil wars of Henry III.'s reign was mainly occupied with the trial of criminal or quasi-criminal cases. In 1268 it obtained a chief justice of its own, but only very gradually did it become a separate court of common law. It still followed the king whenever summoned to do so, although the presence of the king in court became a fiction by the end of the 14th century, during which it lost its former close connection both with the king himself and with the king's council. Thus it was not until a cen tury after the court of common pleas (q.v.) had become a distinct court of common law that the court of king's bench attained a similar position. It exercised a supreme and general jurisdiction,
which comprised (I) criminal jurisdiction; (2) civil jurisdiction; and (3) jurisdiction over the errors of inferior courts including those of the court of common pleas, until by the Act of 183o the court of exchequer chamber became a court of appeal inter mediate between the three common law courts and parliament. It also heard appeals from the court of king's bench in Ireland till 1783, and exercised jurisdiction over officials and others by means of the prerogative writs; e.g., habeas corpus, certiorari, Pro hibition. mandamus. ouo warrant() and ne exeat regno By the Judicature act, 1873, the court became the king's bench division of the High Court of Justice. It consists of a chief justice—now lord chief justice of England—and 18 puisne judges. Appeals from inferior courts come before a divisional court, com posed of two or three judges of the division. For appeals from the divisional court to the court of appeal see PRACTICE and PROCEDURE.
See Baldwin, The King's Council; Holdsworth, Hist. Eng. Law, vol. i. (H. H. L. B.)