Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/161

 5. JENKS: EDWARD I 147 " Common Recav«?y " made good its footing in this connec- tion. The classical instance occurred in the year 1472 ; but it is obvious, from the merely incidental way in which it is mentioned by the reporter, that the process was perfectly familiar at that time ; and, as our knowledge of legal history increases, it may very well be discovered, that the Statute De Donis had even a shorter life than that usually attributed to it. At any rate, ever since the close of the fifteenth: century, the unbreakable entail has ceased to exist, save in the few cases of land settled by Act of Parliament as the reward of public services, and — in the pages of the novelist.^ Only a very brief analysis can be attempted of the long and elaborately technical clauses which make up the rest of the great Statute of Westminster the Second. It was natural that an enactment avowedly based upon the evils brought to light by the Hundred Rolls, and the proceedings thereon, should contain a good deal about feudal abuses. The harsh proceedings of landlords who make use of the new legal pro- cedure to extort their dues from their tenants, are checked; none but s worn bailiff s are to be employed in seizing^goods for default of rent ; and in such cases the tenants are to have full opportunity of testi ngjiie-j:ali ditv of the seizures in an ; independent court. The use of violence in the place of legal ' procedure is sternly prohibited. Further encroachments on the jurisdiction of the Crown are anticipated by the provi- sion, that every judge who goes circuit is to be furnished by the Exchequer officials with a list of " franchises," lawfully claimable by subjects within the counties of his commission; and any tampering with the returns by which such lists are brought up to date is to be punished as treason. On the other hand, the Statute shews every disposition to protect the feudal landowners in the exercise of their admitted rights ; and, in one particular case, we may well think that it assists them at the expense of a class far less able to make its claims heard. The 46th clause of the Statute expressly authorizes must always be made for the classical case of George Eliot, who, in the pages of Felix Holt, shewed that she was quite capable of grasping the subtleties of medieval conveyancing.
 * Honorable exception from the criticism implied in this last sentence