Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/71

 p. 913) s.v. feodum. Hotman remarks that the English use the word fee (longissime tamen a Langobardici iuris ratione et institute) to signify 'praedia omnia quae perpetuo iure tenentur.' He then adds that Stephanus Pasquerius (the famous Étienne Pasquier) had given him Littleton's book: 'ita incondite, absurde et inconcinne scriptum, ut facile appareat verissimum esse quod Polydorus Virgilius in Anglica Historia de iure Anglicano testatus est, stultitiam in eo libro cum malitia et calumniandi studio certare.' To a foreign 'feudist' Littleton's book would seem absurd enough, because in England the feudum had become the general form in which all land-ownership appeared. Brunner (Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, vol. II., p. 11) puts this well: 'Wo jedes Grundeigentum sich in Lehn verwandelt, wird das Lehn, wie die Entwicklung des englischen Rechtes zeigt, schliesslich zum Begrifif des Grundeigentums.'

I have not found in Polydore Virgil's History anything about Littleton. There is a passage however in lib. IX. (ed. Basil. 1556, p. 154) in which he denounces the unjust laws imposed by William the Conqueror and (so he says) still observed in his own day: 'Non possum hoc loco non memorare rein tametsi omnibus notam, admiratione tamen longe dignissimam, atque dictu incredibilem: eiusmodi namque leges quae ab omnibus intelligi deberent, erant, ut etiam nunc sunt, Normanica lingua scriptae, quam neque Galli nee Angli recte callebant.' Among the badges of