Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/209

 6. MAITLAND: THE RENAISSANCE 195 " elbow room enough." ^^ In criminal causes that were of any political importance an examination by two or three doctors of the civil law threatened to become a normal part of our procedure.^^ In short, I am persuaded that in the middle years of the sixteenth century and of the Tudor age the life of our ancient law was by no means lusty. And now we may ask what opposing force, what conserv- ative principle was there in England? National character, the genius of a people, is a wonder-working spirit which stands at the beck and call of every historian. But before we invoke it on the present occasion we might prudently ask our books whether in the sixteenth century the bulk of our German cousins inherited an innate bias towards what they would have called a Welsh jurisprudence. There seems to be plentiful evidence that the learned doctores iuris who coun- selled the German princes and obtained seats in the courts' were cordially detested by the multitude. In modern times they often have to bear much blame for that terrible revolt which we know as the Peasants' War.^* No doubt there were it means that the chancery may interfere with an action at common law, only if that action is opening a question already decided in the chancery. It will be seen that in 1536 the cause of " the common laws " finds itself in very queer company: illiterate, monkish and papistical company, which apparently has made a man of " Anibaptist." (For tliis important manifesto, see Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. xi., pp. 506-507.) ■"Stow, Annals, ed. 1615, p. 631: "This yeere (1557) in Michaelmas terme men might have scene in Westminster hall at the Kinges bench barre not two men of law before the iustices; there was but one named Fostar, who looked about and had nothing to doe, the iudges looking about them. In the common place [Court of Common Pleas] no moe sergeants but one, which was sergeant Bouloise [Bendlowes?], who looked about him, there was elbow roome enough, which made the law- yers complaine of their iniuries in that terme." In 1536 John Rastell the lawyer and printer of law books complains to Cromwell that in both capacities he is in a bad way: he used to print from two to three hundred reams every year but now prints not a hundred reams in two years; he used to make forty marks a year by the law and now does not make forty shillings (Ellis, Original Letters, Ser. III., vol. ii., p. 309). On such stories as these little stress is laid; but until the judicial records of the Tudor reigns are statistically examined, scraps of in- formation may be useful. ■^ For an instance see the examination of a servant of the Abbot of Sawley by Drs. Layton, Legh and Petre {Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. xii., pt. 1, p. 231). " As to the evil done to the peasants in Germany by the Reception of Roman law, see Egelhaaf, Deutsche Oeschichte (Zeitalter der Refor' mation), vol. i., pp. 544 IF.; Lamprecht, Deutsche Oeschichte, vol. v., pp.