Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/202

 188 //. FROM THE 1100' S TO THE 1800' S surprising that this jargon should have been written in a country where Frenchmen had long been regarded as hered- itary foes. This prepares us for the remark that taught law is tough law. But when " Dunce " had been set in Bo- cardo (and it was a doctor of the civil law who set him there ^^), why should the old law-books be spared? They also were barbarous ; they also were sufficiently papistical. Turning to a more serious aspect of affairs, it would not I think be difficult to show that the pathway for a Reception was prepared. Not difficult but perhaps wearisome. At this point it is impossible for us to forget that the year 1485, if important to students of English history for other reasons, is lamentably important for this reason, that there Dr. Stubbs laid down his pen. In his power of marshalling legal details so as to bring to view some living principle or some phase of national development he has had no rival and no second among Englishmen. Howbeit, we may think of the subjected church and the humbled baronage, of the parlia- ment which exists to register the royal edicts, of the English Lex Regia which gives the force of statutes to the king's proclamations,*^ of the undeniable faults of the common law, of its dilatory methods, of bribed and perjured juries, of the new courts which grow out of the King's Council and a le dit Justice que narrowly mist, & pur ceo immediately fuit indict- ment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner, & son dexter manus ampute & fix al Gibbet sur que luy mesme immediatment hange in presence de Court." In France the Ordonnance of Villers-Cotterets (1539) decreed that the judgments of the French courts should be recorded no longer in Latin but in French. " L'utilite de cette innovation. . . se comprend assez d'elle-meme. On dit qu'un motif d'une autre nature, I'interet des belles-lettres, ne contribua pas moins a y decider le roi [Francois I], choqud du latin barbare qu'employaient les tribunaux. Un arret rendu en ces termes: Dicta curia debotavit et debotat dictum Colinum de sua demanda, fut, dit on, ce qui entralna la suppression du latin judiciaire." Henri Martin, Histoire de France, vol viii., pp. 272-3; see also Christie, etienne Dolet, ed. 2, p. 424. " Ellis, Original Letters, Ser. II., vol. ii., p. 61, Dr. Layton to Crom- well: "We have sett Dunce in Bocardo and have utterly banished him Oxforde for ever, with all his blynd glosses, and is now made a common servant to evere man, fast nailede up upon posts in all common bowses of easement." "Stat. 31 Hen. VIII., cap. 8. Already in 1535 Cromwell reports with joy an opinion obtained from the judges to the effect that in a certain event the king might issue a proclamation which would be "as effective as any statute" (Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. viii., p. 411).