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tury much depended upon the labours of this school. questions were opening, and on all sides an appeal was being made to ancient law and ancient history."1 With the help of Cotton, some of these men forged the weapons with which the battle of the constitution was won, created our modern methods and standards of historical research, and, by raising the intellectual level of the legal profession, helped the common law to assert and to maintain its supremacy in the state. Of the work which they did in the department of constitutional law I shall speak later.2 Here I can only describe briefly the literary work and influence of one or two of the most famous of these historically minded lawyers.

Of William Lambard and his work upon different branches of constitutional law I have already spoken. I must here mention the contribution which he made to legal history by his edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws. Considering that he was "a pioneer in an unknown land," his work was, in Dr. Liebermann's opinion, good. At a time when so much was thought to turn upon the character of our early laws and institutions, it was obviously desirable that men should have access to a printed copy of the earliest laws. Another pioneer in this new field of learning was Somner (1598-1669),5 an ecclesiastical lawyer and the son of an ecclesiastical lawyer. He at first helped his father, who was registrar to the court of Canterbury, and was created by Laud registrar of the ecclesiastical courts of the diocese. He was an enthusiastic loyalist; and, after the Restoration, became Master of St. John's hospital at Canterbury. His work was done in the allied departments of Anglo-Saxon language and literature, and the antiquities of our legal history. In the first of these departments he wrote some observations on the Laws of Henry I., translated (but did not publish) Lambard's Latin text of the Anglo-Saxon Laws, and translated Anglo-Saxon documents for Dugdale's Monasticon, besides giving other assistance in the preparation of that work. His most important work was his Saxon-Latin-English Dictionary, to help in the publication of which John Spelman gave him the income of the Anglo-Saxon lectureship, which his father Henry Spelman had founded at Cambridge. In the second of these departments his most important

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3 Vol. iv 117-118.

5 Dict. Nat. Biog.

7" Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, voces phrasesque præcipuas AngloSaxonicas .. cum Latina et Anglica vocum interpretatione complectens Accesserunt Elfrici Abbatis Grammatica Latino-Saxonica cum glossario suo ejusdum generis;" first Ed. 1659; in 1652 he had contributed to Twysden's Ed. of "Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores Decem," a glossary of obscure and old words.

work was his Treatise of Gavelkind.1 Lambard had printed and translated a version of the Kentish customs in his Perambulation of Kent; and had given a short account of some of the points mentioned in the custumal.2 Somner's aim was to give a fuller account of the origins both of the name and the thing. He did not intend it to be a law book, but rather a help to the proper understanding of the law on this topic. In one place he goes beyond the limitations of his subject, and gives an interesting historical disquisition on an important point in the history of the law of succession to chattels.*

Spelman (1564?-1641),5 though a student of Lincoln's Inn, was never a professional lawyer. His chief work was done in the sphere of ecclesiastical history; but, both his Glossary and his tract on tenures by knight service are books of first-rate importance in our legal history. The first was, as we have seen," the earliest dictionary of early legal and historical terms constructed upon sound principles, and both helped Wright and Blackstone to give an orderly exposition of the rules of the land law." Like Lambard and Somner, he was an Anglo-Saxon scholar, and, as we have seen, founded a shortlived Anglo-Saxon lectureship at Cambridge, the revenues of which were ultimately devoted to assisting Somner to complete his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.

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D'Ewes, whose autobiography, with its sometimes malicious comments on his contemporaries, 10 gives so valuable a picture of the life of a law student and man of letters of that day, deserves to be counted among the distinguished members of this school. He began, he tells us, to consult records in order to get light on points of law; but soon came to value them as aids to historical

1"A Treatise of Gavelkind. Both the name and thing. Showing the true Etymologie and Derivation of the one, the nature, antiquity, and original of the other. With sundry emergent Observations, both pleasant and profitable to be known of Kentish men and others, especially such as are studious either of the ancient Custome or the Common Law of this Kingdome. By (a well wisher to both) William Somner;" for gavelkind generally see vol. iii 259-263.

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2 Robinson, Gavelkind Pref. to first Ed.; and see Elton's Ed. (1897) 222-229. 3" I may perchance (at first sight, at least) be thought too bold with the Common lawyers, too busie in their Commonwealth, too much meddling in matter of their peculiar science; yet no otherwise I hope that they and their friends may be willing to excuse me, my intent being only to do them service, and their profession right, by holding forth to publicke view some Antiquities tending at once to the satisfaction of the one and illustration of the other;" and cp. his concluding remarks in which he says his intention was to "handle the subject chiefly in the historical part," and to discover its beginnings, and "not to thrust his sickle into the harvest of the common lawyer." 6 Above 402.

4 Vol. iii 553 n. 6.

7 Above 19-20.

5 Dict. Nat. Biog.

8 Dict. Nat. Biog.

9 The Autobiography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, edited by Halliwell.

10 Thus, op. cit. i 256, while recognizing Selden's "deep knowledge and almost incomparable learning," he says that he was "a man exceedingly puffed up with the apprehension of his own abilities; see ii 47-52 for his account of Sir Nicholas Hyde, with whom he had had a difference of opinion.

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study.1 He was free of Cotton's library and borrowed his books and pamphlets. He tells us how he transcribed the Mirror, 2 Fleta and the Leges Henrici Primi, and fills pages with the antiquarian researches which he made into the origins of his own and his wife's family. At one time he had planned to write a history of England from original sources; and he planned and partially executed an Anglo-Saxon dictionary. But, as Jessopp rightly says, he had little constructive ability. He was a copyist and a collector rather than an author. Though a Puritan and a convinced believer in constitutional government,' he was naturally timid; and, during the period of prerogative rule, was careful not to bring himself in conflict with the authorities-abandoning London and his beloved records rather than risk the consequences of disobeying a royal proclamation. The book which has made his name famous is his Journals of the Elizabethan Parliaments, which is still of primary importance for the constitutional history of the Tudor period.

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Lambard, Somner, Spelman, and D'Ewes were essentially students and scholars. Prynne was also a student and a scholar, and in addition a controversial gladiator. Mutilated and imprisoned by the Star Chamber for his attacks on the king, queen and bishops in the days of Charles I.'s attempt to govern by the prerogative; a distinguished member of the Long Parliament, and a prime mover in the impeachment of Laud; an opponent alike of the claims of the Independents and Presbyterians to be supreme in the state; an opponent of the army and its dealings: with the king, and imprisoned for three years without trial by the Commonwealth government; after Cromwell's death, at length successful in asserting his right to sit in Parliament; an active supporter of the Restoration of Charles II., and of all attempts to restrict the Act of Indemnity; reprimanded by the Speaker for his pamphlet in favour of toleration to the Protestant nonconformists; a recognized authority upon constitutional law and Parliamentary procedure; and, after the Restoration, keeper of the records in the Tower-he had a career which would have left ordinary men little time for serious literary work. And yet

"I at first read records only to find out the matter of law contained in them; but afterwards perceiving other excellences might be observed from them, both historical and national, I always continued the study of them after I had left the Middle Temple and given over the study of the common law itself," op. cit. i 235. 4 Ibid 272.

2 Ibid 258.

5 Dict. Nat. Biog.

3 Ibid 294-295.
6 Ibid.

7 See Autobiography ii 132 seqq. for his comments on ship money; 104-105 for his sympathy with Prynne.

8 Ibid ii 78-80.

9 For his career see Sir Charles Firth's article in Dict. Nat. Biog., and Do cuments relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne (C.S.),

he was always writing. We may adopt a phrase which Bagehot applied to Brougham, and say that, "for many years he rushed among the details of his age and wrote as he ran." It is reckoned that the number of his books and pamphlets exceed two hundred. Most of them are fugitive controversial pieces. But there are many serious books on all sorts of subjects, religious and political; and during his tenure of office as keeper of the records, he published valuable works, illustrated by records up to that time unprinted. Among them we may note his Register of Parliamentary writs, an Abridgment of the records in the Tower of London said to have been collected by Cotton,1 and the Animadversions on Coke's Fourth Institute. But, before he became keeper of the records, and indeed throughout his life, he was a conscientious seeker after truth. He always honestly tried to base his historical work on the best evidence. This is clear from such works as the "Demurrer to the Jews' long-discontinued Remitters into England,” and his "Plea for the House of Lords." Sir Charles Firth says,2 "In point of style Prynne's historical works possess no merits. . . the arrangement is equally careless. Yet, in spite of these deficiencies, the amount of historical material they contain, and the number of records printed for the first time in his pages, give his historical writings a lasting value." His views on legal education were sound and sensible-he entered a powerful protest against the decay, after the Restoration, of the old system; and he was keenly alive to the deficiencies of the common law. We have seen that he urged upon the common lawyers the need to study the continental literature of commercial law, if they were to make the best use of the opportunity which their victory over the court of Admiralty had given to them; and he had visions of making, and inducing Parliament to enact, a revised edition of the statute law.5

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Aubrey gives us a quaint description of the manner in which this astonishing literary output was produced. His manner

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1 But the better opinion is that the collection was made by William and Robert Bowyer, see Dict. Nat. Biog. Cotton p. 313.

2 Dict. Nat. Biog.; apparently his contemporaries formed a somewhat similar opinion; Pepys, Diary (Ed. Wheatley) v 352, relates how Francis Finch "told me Mr. Prin's character: that he is a man of mighty labour and reading and memory, but the worst judge of matters, or layer together of what he hath read in the world; "—" which," adds Pepys, "I do not believe him in."

3 Vol. vi c. 8.

while . .

4 Above 147.

5 Pepys, Diary (Ed. Wheatley) v 279 -he "did discourse with me a good about the laws of England, telling me the many faults in them; and among others, their obscurity through multitude of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives, and Parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law, which appears a very noble good thing.'

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Ᏺ Letters from the Bodleian Library ii 508, cited Dict. Nat. Biog. 436.

of study was thus: he wore a long quilt cap, which came two or three inches at least over his eyes, which served him as an umbrella to defend his eyes from the light; about every three hours his man was to bring him a roll and a pot of ale to refocillate his wasted spirits; so he studied and drank and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then he made a good supper.” It would seem that even if he went out to dinner his mind was chiefly occupied with his literary work.1 There were giants of industry in those days. "Prynne, munching his crust of bread as with burning zeal he deciphered decaying documents in the filth and stench of the White Tower, is an heroic figure." 2

But of this school of historians and lawyers the chief ornament, by the consent both of contemporaries and of posterity, is John Selden 3-in Milton's words, "the chief of learned men reputed in this land." 4 I shall, in the first place, sketch briefly the main facts of his life and enumerate the most important of his works. In the second place, I shall attempt to give some account of the man himself and of the characteristics of those of his works which bear upon the history of English law.

(i) Selden was born in 1584. He was educated at Hart Hall, Oxford, and the Inner Temple, and became a bencher of that Society in 1633. From the first his tastes were historical and literary rather than strictly legal. In 1610, while still a student, he published three historical tracts on English History. He was fined in 1624 for refusing to act as Reader; and he never attempted to gain a large practice in the courts. What practice he had was probably of the consultative and conveyancing sort. He appeared in court chiefly in cases of constitutional importance, in which great historical learning was needed. From the first he joined the constitutional party— περὶ παντὸς τήν éλevoepíav" is the motto which he wrote in all his books. In 1621 he incurred the displeasure of the king by helping the Commons in connection with their famous protestation. In 1623 he entered Parliament as member for Lancaster. In 1626 he sat in Charles I.'s second Parliament, and took an active part in the impeachment of Buckingham. In 1627 he argued for

1 Pepys met him at dinner, and sat next him-he "in discourse with me fell upon what records he hath of the lust and wicked lives of nuns heretofore in England, and he showed me out of his pocket one, etc.," Diary (Ed. Wheatley) ii 244.

2 Maitland, Collected Papers iii 454; see vol. ii 600 for Prynne's description of the state of the records.

3 Fry's article in Dict. Nat. Biog. ; life prefixed to Wilkins' Ed. of his works; G. W. Johnson, Memoirs of Selden; two articles by Professor Hazeltine on Selden as a Legal Historian, H.L. R. xxiv 105, 205.

4 Milton, Areopagitica,

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