In an act of 1534, with regard to ecclesiastical appeals from the courts of the archbishops to the crown, it is provided that the appeal shall be to the king in Chancery, "and that upon every such appeal a commission shall be directed under the great seal to such persons as shall be named by the king's highness, his heirs or successors, like as in cases of appeal from the Admiralty Court."
The judiciary is composed of a supreme court of seven members, a court of chancery, a county court in each county, a probate court in each probate district, and justices of the peace.
The court of chancery is held by the judges of the supreme court, the county by a supreme court judge with the aid of two associates elected by the people of the county.
Cromwell was essentially a conservative reformer; in his attempts to purge the court of chancery of its most flagrant abuses, and to settle the ecclesiastical affairs of the nation, he showed himself anxious to retain as much of the existing system as could be left untouched without doing positive evil.
The depositions of witnesses were returned to Rome in 1632, but meantime the forms of the Roman chancery had been changed by Urban VIII., and the advocates could not at once continue their work.