When the court formally became an independent body in the 16th century, free of Privy Council control, it immediately became vulnerable to attack by the common-law courts, which asserted that it had no formal jurisdiction and that the Court of Chancery was an appropriate equitable body for cases. It was technically true that the court, as it was no longer part of the Privy Council, could not claim jurisdiction based on tradition, but in 1597 Sir Julius Caesar (then a Master of Requests Ordinary) gave examples of times when the common law courts had recognised the Court of Requests' jurisdiction as recently as 1585. The common law courts change of heart was undoubtedly due to the large amount of business deserting them for the Court of Requests, and in 1590 they went on the offensive; writs of "habeas corpus" were issued for people imprisoned for contempt of court in the Requests, judgments were issued in cases the Court of Requests were dealing with and it was decided that jailing an individual based on a writ from the Court of Requests constituted false imprisonment. Most academics accept that the court never recovered from these blows, and when the English Civil War made the privy seal inoperative, the court "died a natural death". The post of Master of Requests was abolished in 1685.