The Collaborative International Dictionary
Petition \Pe*ti"tion\, n. [F. p['e]tition, L. petitio, fr. petere, petitum, to beg, ask, seek; perh. akin to E. feather, or find.]
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A prayer; a supplication; an imploration; an entreaty; especially, a request of a solemn or formal kind; a prayer to the Supreme Being, or to a person of superior power, rank, or authority; also, a single clause in such a prayer.
A house of prayer and petition for thy people.
--1 Macc. vii. 37.This last petition heard of all her prayer.
--Dryden. -
A formal written request addressed to an official person, or to an organized body, having power to grant it; specifically (Law), a supplication to government, in either of its branches, for the granting of a particular grace or right; -- in distinction from a memorial, which calls certain facts to mind; also, the written document.
Petition of right (Law), a petition to obtain possession or restitution of property, either real or personal, from the Crown, which suggests such a title as controverts the title of the Crown, grounded on facts disclosed in the petition itself.
--Mozley & W.The Petition of Right (Eng. Hist.), the parliamentary declaration of the rights of the people, assented to by Charles I.
Wiktionary
n. (context UK legal historical English) A remedy available to subjects to recover property from the Crown.
Wikipedia
In English law, a petition of right was a remedy available to subjects to recover property from the Crown.
Before the Crown Proceedings Act 1947, the British Crown could not be sued in contract. However, as it was seen to be desirable that Crown contractors could obtain redress, lest they be inhibited from taking on such work, the petition of right came to be used in such situations, especially after the Petitions of Right Act 1860 simplified the process. Before the petition could be heard by the courts, it had to be endorsed with the words fiat justitia on the advice of the Home Secretary and Attorney-General. This Latin phrase was normally translated as "Let right be done".
One of the most famous causes célèbres in English law, the Archer-Shee case, arose out of proceedings on a petition of right.
Section 1 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 allows claims for which a petition would previously have been demanded to be brought in the courts directly as against any other defendant. However, a petition and fiat still appear to be necessary for personal claims against the monarch.
Usage examples of "petition of right".
The Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid before him one of the great documents of history, which is called the PETITION OF RIGHT, requiring that the free men of England should no longer be called upon to lend the King money, and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so.
Whether it could really be traced, historically, to the Anglo-Saxons or not, everyone knew that in March 1628 the House of Commons had, in its Petition of Right, sought royal recognition of four principles—.