per andersen (and later the so-calledHerredage, more or less taking over for the medieval Danehof) that the royal initiated court met to decide the cases with which it was presented.20 This sequence of courts was repeated by King Valdemar III’s coronation charter of 1326 with an added provision for the king’s chancellor to respond to cases instead of the king. This possibility was extended by the coronation charter of King Valdemar IVfrom 1354 to include the king’s main adviser in the royal council. In the previous year Valdemar IVhad declared that an appeal in a property case from the district and the provincial court had been conclusively decided when two judges from the provincial court in Zealand had testified to the royal court about the previous proceedings of the provincial court. Later on, some texts mentioned the possibility to “transfer” a case from one court to another court: In a letter patent from 1443, we find a mention of transferring a case from the lands to the king’s court if both parties had agreed upon this. This must mean that it was possible to transfer a case to another court after it had been initiated at one court before the first court had pronounced a sentence as long as both parties agreed: a possibility that was also found in the early provincial laws that allowed the transfer of a case from the district to the provincial court if the parties could not settle their case. The terminology surrounding the action of transferring a case was thus not unambiguous in the fifteenth century, but several examples from the start of the subsequent century indicate that it was possible to transfer a case to another court than the one at which it had been initiated. During the sixteenth century this process could apparently only happen when one party gained the permission of a judge (and possibly also the magistrates) for this or when the judge thought that his was not the right court to hear a particular case, for which reason the judge might transfer the case to its proper forum. Compared to the letter patent from 1443 mentioned above, in which a transfer of the case from one court to another “only” required both parties’ consent, the development of the procedure bears witness to the central power’s tightening grip on the administration of justice in the following 20 Hude, Anna 1893 pp. 63-90. 255
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