many times mistaken in general. 3. In those days few cases in law were cited, but very pithily and now . . . such a farrago of authorities, it cannot be but there is much refuse." Clearly it was decisions and the reasons for them which were coming to be useful to the profession;1 and the appreciation of this fact will tend to prevent reporters from incumbering their reports with the recital of the miscellaneous events passing in court which was formerly customary. The report will tend to assume something of the impersonal character of the record.

In the third place, the demand for accurate decisions will tend to the growth of reports made in order to be published. A man's own notes made for himself will no doubt be useful enough to the taker. He generally has some sort of recollection of the events noted, and can silently correct inaccuracies. But we can see from many of the reports of this period that such notes will not bear publication without a great deal of revision. Reports made in order that they may be published will be obviously far superior to notes of cases made without any idea of publication. Plowden is again the pioneer of the habit of methodical and accurate reporting. He tells us that often before the case was argued he had studied the record with such care that he could have argued the case itself; and that after he had prepared his report he submitted it for correction to the serjeants and judges who had argued in it.2 Coke, too, carefully revised the reports which he published, and was unwilling that any work of his not so revised should be published after his death.3

It is not till the middle of the eighteenth century that we get, in the reports of Burrow, the beginnings of the regular series of authorized reporters attached to particular courts, who regularly made reports of the decisions of those courts for publication. During the whole of this period, the reports published were mainly posthumous publications of notes of cases taken by the

1 Above 371 n. 5.

2" And in order that I might execute this work with the utmost sincerity and truth, and to the intent that I might be more able to understand the arguments, and to comprehend the true causes of the judgments herein contained, let me inform the reader that in almost all the cases which I have undertaken to report, before they came to be argued, I had copies of the records, and took pains to study the points of law arising thereupon, so that often times I was so much master of them, that if I had been put to it, I was ready to have argued when the first man began... And besides this, after I had drawn out my report at large, and before I had entered it into my book, I shewed such cases and arguments, as seemed to me to be the most difficult, and to require the greatest memory, to some of the judges or serjeants who argued in them, in order to have their opinion of the sincerity and truth of the report," Plowden, Pref. v.

3" And (if it shall please God) I intend hereafter to set out another work, whereof I have only collected the materials, but not reduced them to such a forme as I intend, lest if I should leave it as it is, it might, after my death, be published (as hath bin done in the like case) before it be perfected," 8 Co. Rep. Pref. xxxv.

reporters for their own use. It is not until the rise of these authorized reporters that the reports assume their modern form. But we do see that, under the pressure of professional needs, the reports of this period are, in their contents and style, gradually approximating to the contents and style of a modern law report. Bacon, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, had already foreshadowed the shape which the reports will eventually assume.1 But this development was then in the future. The reports of this period thus form the connecting link between the Year Books and those modern law reports, which begin with the authorized reports of the latter half of the eighteenth century; just as these authorized reports form the connecting link between the reports of this period and our semi-official series of the Law Reports?

At the close of this period it was becoming clear that the growth of the modern reports was rendering the old abridgments of the Year Books quite inadequate to the needs of the practitioner. For some time this need was met by abstracts or digests of, and indices to, the regular reports. Several of these were published by different authors; but the author who made a speciality of this kind of literature was Thomas Ashe, who became a Bencher of Gray's Inn in 1597. In 1600 he wrote a table to Dyer's reports," in 1607 an abridgment of Plowden's reports, in 1609 an abridgment of Dyer's reports, in 1625 a collection of new cases of the time of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary taken from Brooke's Abridgment, and an abridgment of Coke's

4

8

1 De Augmentis, Bk. viii c. 3 Aph. 74-" Let this be the method of taking down judgments and committing them to writing. Record the cases precisely, the judgments themselves word for word; add the reasons which the judges allege for their judgments; do not mix up the authority of cases brought forward as examples with the principal case; and omit the perorations of counsel, unless they contain something very remarkable;" the translation is Spedding's.

2 See C. C. Soule, The Lawyer's Reference Manual 66-67.

3 E.g. we get abstracts of Coke's Reports by J. Davis; of Coke upon Littleton by Davenport; of the Doctor and Student; and of Dyer's Reports; see Thomas Basset, A catalogue of the common and statute law books of the realm (1671) 3; cp. also ibid pp. 85-87 for other tables and indices; among them we may note Fleetwood's Tables to the Y.BB.; and Townshend's Tables to the printed precedents of pleadings; we even get indices to the Abridgments; J. Rastell in 1517 published The Tables to Fitzherbert's Abridgment, Reeves H.E.L. iii 432; in 1553 an Abridgment to the Book of Assizes was published, ibid 565; and to the 1679 ed. of the Y.BB. of the second part of Henry VI.'s reign (21-39 Hy. VI.) there is annexed a very good index and abridgment made by Robert Barnwal of Gray's Inn.

4 Dict. Nat. Biog.

5" Le Table al Lievr des Reportes del tres reverend Judge Si. Ja. Dyer." "Abridgement des touts les Cases Reportes a large per Mounsieur Plowden ovesques les Exceptions al pleadings et leur Responses les resolutions des matters in Ley et touts auters principal matters surdants sur les arguments de mesmes."

7 "Un Abridgement de touts les cases reportes per Mounsieur Jasques Dyer;" this work is anonymous, but it is attributed to Ashe in the Bodleian catalogue.

8" Ascuns nouvel Cases de les ans et temps le Roy H. 8, Edw. 6 et la Roygne Marie. Escrie en la grand Abridgement compose par Robert Brook;" at the end

reports together with an index of cases and an index to the subject matter.' But his greatest work (published in 1614) was his "Promptuary or Reportory Generall de les annals et plusors autres livres del comen ley dengleterre." It consists of two volumes divided into four parts. At the end of each volume is additional matter published since the book was printed." At the end of the second volume there is also a list of authors drawn upon, and a collection of eulogies upon deceased judges taken from Coke's reports. The book itself is something between an abridgment and an index. It gives under alphabetical heads, rather the list of references where the law can be found, than the principles of the law itself. The headings no doubt suggest the principles: but the author does not state the principles explicitly.3 But these abstracts, digests, and indices did not do for the modern sources of law what the old abridgments had done for the Year Books. It was becoming obvious, at the end of this period, that a complete and up-to-date abridgment was much needed. The need was met by the publication in 1668 of Rolle's Abridgment.

Henry Rolle was born in 1589, and was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and the Inner Temple. He was made serjeant at law in 1640. He was a member of James I.'s last Parliament, and of the first three parliaments of Charles I.'s reign; and, from the first, he identified himself with the constitutional opposition. In 1645 he was created a judge of the King's Bench, and in 1648 chief justice. He accepted a renewal of his commission after the execution of Charles I., and acted as a member of the Council of State. In 1654, he narrowly escaped being hanged by a party of royalists led by Penruddock, who had surprised Salisbury while he was holding the assizes there. He was not disposed to agree to all Cromwell's arbitrary acts, and obtained his discharge from his judicial office in 1655. He died in the following year. He was one of that band of literary lawyers which, as we shall see, distinguished the earlier years of the seventeenth century. Hale draws a pleasant picture of the manner in which Rolle,

are "Aliquot Casus in quibusdam lecturis Temp. H. 8 et H. 7 cum paucis aliis casibus et regulis."

1" Un general Table a touts les several livres de les Reportes de le darreine tres reverend Judge Sir Edward Coke Chevalier, jadis chiefe justice de Bank le roy, per quelle touts les cases et matters in yceux conteynus puissont facillment estre trouves. Ovesques deux catalogues Alphabetical, L'un de les principal cases, l'autre de touts les general titres naturalment surdant hors del matter des dits Reports;" no date. 2 Principally taken from the 10th part of Coke's Reports.

3 An example will show this; vol. i p. 1o the heading is, "Action sur le case § 8," and we read, "Ou accion sur cas gist vers cestuique garant chose vendu ou auterment, et ou le garante est material ou nemy," followed by a list of references to Dyer, F.N.B., Kitchin, Keilway, and also to another § in his own book. 5 Below 402-403.

+ Foss, op. cit. vi 472-475; Dict. Nat. Biog.

Littleton,1 afterwards chief justice of the Common Pleas and lord keeper, Herbert, afterwards attorney general, Gardyner, afterwards recorder of London, and Selden "that treasury of all kinds of learning"-met constantly and almost daily, "to bring in their several acquests in learning as it were into a common stock by mutual communication, whereby each of them became in a great measure the participant and common possessor of the others' learning and knowledge." His Abridgment, like his reports, was compiled by the author for his own use. It was probably written before 1640; and was published posthumously 5 with an introduction by Hale; and this introduction is, as we shall see, a valuable historical summary of the development of the common law up to the time of the Restoration."

3

The historical importance of this Abridgement is the fact that it marks a new departure in the literature of Abridgments. The older abridgments had simply digested Year Book cases under alphabetical headings. Their great defect was the heterogeneous character of the entries collected under each alphabetical head. This defect had been pointed out by Staunford in 1548;8 and Francis Bacon had suggested the composition of a new abridgment which should be more orderly in its arrangement. Rolle's Abridgment to some extent remedied this defect-each topic was divided, as Staunford had suggested, into separate headings. But what distinguishes it even more markedly from the abridgments of the older type is the fact that it is more than a mere digest of case law. It contains summaries both of Parliamentary records and of statutes; and therefore it comes nearer than the old abridgments came to being a digest of the whole law. For both these reasons it was long a model to future

Foss, op. cit. vi 473, says-" Four times appointed Reader of his Inn, he was prevented by the prevailing plague from performing the duties of that office till the last occasion in Lent, 1639; but during his leisure he employed himself in compiling that 'Abridgment of Cases and Resolutions of the Law,' which has been held up by some of the ablest lawyers as an example to be followed for its perspicuity and method."

5 Hale's Pref. to Rolle's Abridgment.

7 For these Abridgments see vol. ii. 543-545.

6 Vol. vi c. 8.

8"I would wish that amongest such plenty of lerned men as bee at this day some thing were devysed to help the students of their long jorney . . whiche thing might wel come to pass after my poore mynd, if such titles as bee in the great abrijement of Justice Fitzherbert were by the Judges or some other learned men labored and studied, that is to say, every title by itself by special divisions digested, ordered, and disposed in such sort as that all the judicial acts and cases in the same might bee brought and appere under certain principles, rules, and grounds of the said lawes," Prerogative, Dedication to Nicholas Bacon; he regarded his own work as an essay in this direction.

9 Spedding, Letters and Life vi 70.

makers of abridgments. It influenced Hughes,' Nelson,2D'Anvers who translated it and added new cases, and Viner.1 But when Viner published his work (1741-1756) abridgments compiled on this plan were being superseded by abridgments of a yet more advanced type, which consisted, not of notes of cases and statutes roughly put together under alphabetical heads and somewhat arbitrarily chosen sub-heads, but of collections of scientifically constructed treatises on all branches of the law. Shepherd's Abridgments of 1656° and 16757 mark the beginnings of this new departure; but they are poor pieces of work; and the transition to this new type of abridgment was not complete till the posthumous publication of Comyn's Digest (1762), and of Bacon's Abridgment (1736). They are the forerunners of the modern legal encyclopædias with which we are all familiar.9

Both Coke 10 and Bacon 11 had deprecated the excessive use of

1" The Grand Abridgment of the law continued, or a Collection of the Principal Cases and Points of the Common Law of England contained in all the Reports extant from the first of Elizabeth to this present time by way of Common Place." (1660-1662.)

2" An Abridgment of the Common Law, being a Collection of the Principal Cases Argued and Adjudged in the several Courts of Westminster Hall, brought down to the year 1725." (1725-1726.)

D'Anvers' work does not go beyond the letter E; his first volume appeared in 1708, his second in 1713, and his third in 1737; in 1727 appeared the single title "Error." It was owing to the existence of this Abridgment that Viner began his work with the letter F, went on to the end of the alphabet, and published the volumes containing the titles A-E last.

See my lecture on Charles Viner and the Abridgments of English Law, L.Q.R. xxxix 34-35; Viner, in the Preface to vol. xiii of his Abridgment, speaks of "My Lord Roll whose Abridgment is my text."

For Shepherd see below 391-392.

"An Epitome of all the Common and Statute Laws of this Nation;" it is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell. It is divided into 170 chapters, alphabetically arranged; they run from "Acceptance" to "Words."

7"A Grand Abridgment of the common and statute law of England alphabetically digested under proper heads and titles;" the arrangement of allotting a chapter to each word is abandoned; there are many more headings, and more information is given.

8 Comyn died in 1740, Foss, Judges viii 114, so that his Digest was probably written before Bacon's.

See my lecture on Charles Viner and the Abridgments of English Law, L.Q.R. xxxix 35-36.

10 This I know, that Abridgments in many Professions have greatly profited. the authors themselves; but as they are used, have brought no small Prejudice to others; for the advised and orderly Reading over of the books at large in such Manner as elsewhere I have pointed out, I absolutely determine to be the right Way to enduring and perfect knowledge, and to use Abridgments as Tables, and to trust only to the Books at large: For I hold him not discreet that will sectari rivulos, when he may petere fontes. And certain it is, that the tumultuary reading of Abridgments doth cause a confused Judgment, and a broken and troubled Kind of Delivery or Utterance," 4 Co. Rep. Pref.

11"I could wish if it were possible that none mought use them but such as bad read the course first; that they might serve for repertories to learned lawyers, and not to make a lawyer in haste," Spedding, Letters and Life vi 70.

L