Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/203

 6. MAITLAND: THE RENAISSANCE 189 adopt a summary procedure devised by legists and decretists. Might not the Council and the Star Chamber and the Court of Requests — courts not tied and bound by ancient formal- ism, — do the romanizing work that was done in Germany by the Imperial Chamber Court, the Reichskammergerichtf ** This was the time when King Henry's nephew James V was establishing a new court in Scotland, a College of Justice, and Scotland was to be the scene of a Reception.** It seems fairly certain that, besides all that he effected, Henry had at times large projects in his mind: a project for a great college of law (possibly a College of Justice in of various councils and courts from an ancient Curia Regis seems to have a close parallel in French history: so close that imitation on one side or the other may at times be suspected. After the parlement with its various chambers (which answer to our courts of common law) has been established, the royal council interferes with judicial matters in divers ways, and sections of the council become tribunals which compete with the parlement. (See e. g. Esmein, Histoire du droit franqais, ed. 2, pp. 469 if., and the pedigree of courts and councils in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire gSnirale, vol. iv., p. 143; also the pedigree in N. Valois, Le conseil du roi (1888), p. 11; and Brissaud, Histoire du droit frangais, pp. 816 ff.) In Germany the doctors of civil law made their way first into councils and then into courts. " Die fremdrechtlich ge- schulten Juristen wurden in Deutschland anfanglich nur in Verwal- tungssachen verwendet. Zur Rechtsprechung gelangten sie dadurch, dass die Verwaltung diese an sich zog, und zwar zuerst am Hofe des Konigs" (Brunner, Orundzuge der deutschen Bechtsgeschichte, 1901, p. 227). In the England of Henry VIH's day there seems no little danger that die fremdrechtlich geschulten Juristen, of whom there are a good many in the king's service, will gain the upper hand in the new courts that have emerged from the council, and will proceed from Verwaltung to Rechtsprechung. There came a time when Dr. Tunstall (who got his law at Padua) was presiding over the Council of the North and Dr. Roland Lee over the Council of the Marches. In 1538 Dr. Lee, who was endeavouring to bring Wales to order, said in a letter to Cromwell, "If we should do nothing but as the common law will, these things so far out of order will never be redressed " (Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. xxxii., p. 375). In 1534 there was a project for the erection of yet another new court. See Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. vii., p. 603: "Draft act of parliament for the more rigid enforcement of previous statutes, appointing a new court, to consist of six discreet men, of whom three at least shall be outer barristers in the Inns of Court, who shall be called justices or conservators of the common weal and sit together in the White Hall at Westminster or elsewhere, with power to discuss all matters relating to the common weal and to call before them all persons who have violated any act of parliament made since the begin- ning of Henry VIII.'s reign." If only three of these judges need be barristers, what are the rest to be?
 * The story (with which we are familiar in England) of the evolution
 * Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 335.