What Was Special Pleading?
From a period of very remote antiquity down to the passing of the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852, the pleadings in our Law Courts were of a highly artificial character, and had been elaborated, by the care of judges and practitioners during many successive centuries, into a regular system or science, called pleading, or more properly, special pleading, which constituted a distinct branch of the Law, with treatises and professors of its own. It was a system highly rated by our ancient lawyers, and had at least the merit of developing the point in controversy with the severest precision. But its strictness and subtlety were a frequent subject of complaint; and one object of the Common Law Procedure Act, 1852, was to relax and simplify its rules. Whether the effect of this will be to impair its value or not in other respects, experience alone can decide.—Stephen’s Commentaries, note.
Lord Campbell studied, at Lincoln’s Inn, the mysteries of special pleading, under the guidance of Mr. Tidd, through whom he traced his legal pedigree up to the celebrated Tom Warren, father of this wondrous art. Tom Warren begat Serjeant Runnington, Serjeant Runnington begat Tidd, Tidd begat Campbell, and Campbell begat Dundas and Vaughan Williams. “Tidd,” writes his grateful pupil, “lived to see four sons sitting together in the House of Lords—Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Denman, Lord Cottenham, and Lord Campbell. To the unspeakable advantage of having been three years his pupil, I chiefly ascribe my success at the bar.”