The Statute of Gloucester and the ensuing legal hearings were a means by which Edward I tried to recover regal authority that had been alienated during the reign of his father, King Henry III (1207–1272), who had been made a virtual tool of the baronial party, led by Simon de Montfort.

Edward I recognized the need for the legal "reform" and considered Parliament as a means of buying popular support by encouraging loyal subjects to petition the King against his own barons and ministers.

The statute is the origin of the common law doctrine of waste, which allows successors with future interests in a piece of property to prevent current tenants, who do not hold the land in fee simple, from making substantial changes to the property that would decrease its value.

[2] The statute of 1278 provided for several important legal amendments, including a modification of novel disseisin, one of the most popular forms of action for the recovery of land which had been seized illegally.

It challenged baronial rights through a revival of the system of general eyres (royal justices to go on tour throughout the land) and through a significant increase in the number of pleas of quo warranto (literally, "By what warrant?")