Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/287

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CHUSE to begin with this period of time of K. ’s reign, becauſe we have clear law and hiſtory to ſhew how parliaments ſtood in his time, and what law was ordained concerning them for ever.

is in the Mirror of Juſtice, which, as my lord ſays in his preface to his tenth reports, was written in the Saxon times, and it appears by the book itſelf: but ſeveral things were added to it by a learned and wiſe lawyer, who lived in the reign of  I. and  II. antiquity enough for a book, we deſire no more; for we are ſure that no commonwealths-man had the penning of it. “