Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/252

 244 LAW MERCHANT IN LONDON IN 1.292 April le-Grand had no jurisdiction in error, 1 the reasons presum- ably being those of expedition and certainty which underlay the whole conception of the law merchant. 2 The sheriffs for a time retained a concurrent jurisdiction with the mayor's court. 3 The documents printed below 4 furnish what appears to be the earliest record which has been preserved of a case tried before warden or mayor according to the law merchant. 5 Taken together, the transcript of the proceedings in the warden's court and the memorandum furnished by the warden in justification of the proceedings give us a good deal of information concerning the law merchant as it was administered at the end of the thir- teenth century, and they tell us also, what is at least as interesting, the advantages which London merchants and citizens believed they derived from the law merchant. It will be at once observed that in one important particular the procedure in the warden's court differed from that described in the Bristol ' Lex Mercatoria '. The court is not one in which the merchants are the judges as in mercantile courts elsewhere. 6 1327 for the treatise on the courts of London which is found here and elsewhere : see Borough Customs (Selden Soc.), i. xxxviii, and, for a variant version, The City Law (1647). The letter to the king (Ricarfs Kal., p. 112) seems undoubtedly to be connected with the eyre of 1321. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the passage relating to Southwark (p. 106) could contain no mention of its grant to the city if written after 1327. On this basis there is no difficulty in accepting the statement (p. 93) that the treatise was contained in a book belonging to Henry Darcy, mayor (never recorder) in 1337. 1 Ibid. p. 101. The justices itinerant sitting at the Tower might try mercantile causes : see Assize Roll, no. 546, m. 47d., where the justices taking the London eyre of 14 Edward II are directed to try a case ' secundum legem et consuetudinem regni nostri vel secundum legem mercatoriam '. 2 It would seem, however, as we might expect, that the Council would afford relief : below, p. 247. 3 Mun. Gildh. Lond. i. 199, 216. This jurisdiction they lost towards the end of the fourteenth century. The Guildhall Liber Dunthorn, fo. 68, contains a record of a case in 1390 removed on the application of the parties from the sheriffs' court to the mayor's court, ' quia eadem querela tangit legem mercatoriam et talis accio tangens legem mercatoriam et precipue inter mercatores extraneos non consueuit terminari coram Vicecomite, set secundum consuetudinem Ciuitatis predate finiri et terminari deberet in camera predicta [sc. interiori camera Gihalde] coram Maiore et Aldermannis noticiam legis mercatorie habentibus '. 4 The three documents formed a small complete Chancery file, now merged in the modern file which bears the reference Chanc. Misc. 109/1 : the individual documents, are not yet numbered. 6 By the 'establishments' the warden was required to keep a roll (Mun. Gildh. Lond. i. 291), and presumably the mayor did so before him : but the earliest roll of the mayor's court now preserved at the Guildhall begins in 1297. There are a few notes of earlier cases (not concerning the law merchant) tried in the mayor's or warden's court to be found in Letter Books A and B. The only full transcript from the Court Rolls of earlier date than that now printed appears to be in Letter Book A, fo. 96. This is an action before the warden, 31 July 1291. mercatores eiusdem Curie et non per maiorem nee per senescallum mercati.'
 * Little Bed Book, p. 70: 'In omni curia mercati singula iudicia reddi debent per-