Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/207

 6. M AIT LAND: THE RENAISSANCE 193 once fell from Edmund Burke occur to us : " To put an end to reports is to put an end to the law of England.^*^ Then in 154<7 just after King Henry's death a wail went up from " divers students of the common laws." The common laws, they said, were being set aside in favour of " the law civil " insomuch that the old courts had hardly any business.'^ Ten we have on our hands the question raised by what Plowden says in the Preface to his Commentaries touching the existence of official reporters. Plowden says that he began to study the law in 30 Hen. VIII, and that he had heard say that in ancient times there were four reporters paid by the king. His words make it clear that the official reporters, if they ever existed, came to an end some considerable time before 30 Hen. VIII. The question whether they ever existed cannot be raised here. Mr. Pike's investigations have not, so I think, tended to bear out the tale that Plowden had heard; and if the king paid stipends to the reporters, some proof of this should be forthcoming among the financial records. The evidence of Francis Bacon is of later date and looks like a mere repetition of what Plowden said (Bacon, Amendment of the Law; Spedding, Life and Letters, vol. v., p. 86). But, be all this as it may, the fact seems clear that the ancient prac- tice of law reporting passed through a grave crisis in the sixteenth cen- tury. We know the reign of Edward IV and even that of Edward II better than we know that of Edward VI. The zeal with which Tottdl from 1553 onwards was printing old reports makes the dearth of mod- ern reports the more apparent. Then Plowden expressly says that he reported " for my private instruction only," and Dyer's Reports (which comprise some cases too early to have been reported by him) were posthumously published. The total mass of matter from the first half of the century that we obtain under the names of Broke, Benloe, Dali- son, Keilwey, Moore and Anderson is by no means large, and in many cases its quality will not bear comparison with that of the Year Books of Edward IV. (J. W. Wallace, The Reporters, ed. 4, Boston, 1882, is an invaluable guide; see also V. V. Veeder, The English Reports, in Harvard Law Review, vol. xv., p. 1.) ^ Burke, Report from Committee appointed to inspect the Lords' Journals: "To give judgment privately is to put an end to reports; and to put an end to reports is to put an end to the law of England." "Acts of the Privy Council, 1547-1550, pp. 48-50. Petition of divers students of the common laws to the Lord Protector and the Privy Coun- cil : " Pleasith it your honorable Lordships to call to your remembrance that whereas the Imperial Crowne of this realme of Inglande and the hole estate of the same have been alwayes from the beginning a Reame Imperial, having a lawe of itself called the Commen Lawes of the realme of Inglande, by which Lawe the Kinges of the same have as Imperial Governours thereof ruled and governed the people and subject es in suche sorte as the like thereof hath nat been seen in any other. . . So it is, if it like your good Lordships, that now of late this Commen Lawes of this realme, partely by Injunctions, aswel before verdictes, jugementes and execucions as after, and partly by writtes of Sub Pena issuing owte of the Kinges Courte of Chauncery, hath nat been only stayed of their directe course, but also many times altrid and violated by reason of Decrees made in the saide Courte of Chauncery, most grounded upon the lawe civile and apon matter depending in the conscience and discrecion of the hearers thereof, who being Civilians