Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/217

 6. MAITLAND: THE RENAISSANCE 203 appropriate the law of another race and galvanizes a dead Corpus Juris into a semblance of life. Since the first of January 1900 the attempt to administer law out of Justin- ian's books has been abandoned in Germany. The so-called " Roman-Dutch " law of certain outlying parts of the British Empire now stands alone,^^ and few, I imagine, would foretell for it a brilliant future, unless it passes into the hand of the codifier and frankly ceases to be nominally Roman. Let us observe, however, that much had been at stake in the little England of the sixteenth century. In 1606 Coke was settling the first charter of Virginia.®* In 1619 elected " burgesses " from the various " hundreds " of Virginia were assembling, and the first-born child of the mother of parliaments saw the light.®^ Maryland was granted to Lord Baltimore with view of frankpledge and all that to view of frankpledge doth belong, to have and to hold in free and common socage as of the castle of Windsor in the county of Berks, yielding yearly therefor two Indian arrows of those parts on the Tuesday in Easter week.®^ The port and in which a rule of law is enforced because It is (or is deemed to be) a rule of Roman law. See Oalliers v. By croft [1901] A. C. 130, for a recent discussion before the Judicial Committee (on an appeal from Natal) of the import of a passage in the Digest. Are there many lands in which so much respect would be paid by a tribunal and for prac- tical purposes to a response of Papinian's? I think not. •« Macdonald, Select Charters, 1899, p. 1: "The first draft of the charter . . . was probably drawn by Sir John Popham . . . but the final form was the work of Sir Edward Coke, attorney general, and Sir John Dodderidge, solicitor general." "Doyle, The English in America, vol. i., p. 211: "On the 30th of July, 1619, the first Assembly met in the little church at Jamestown. A full report of its proceedings still exists in the English Record Office (Colonial Papers, July 30, 16l9)." An abstract is printed in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 22. •"Charter of Maryland, 1632, Macdonald, Select Charters, p. 53. In 1620 the grant to the Council of New England (Ibid., p. 23) referred to the manor of East Greenwich and reserved by way of rent a fifth part of the ore of gold and silver. The grant of Carolina (Ibid., p. 121) reserved a rent of twenty marks and a fourth of the ore. The grant of New Netherlands to the duke of York (Ibid., p. 136) reserved a rent of forty beaver skins, if demanded. The grant of Pennsylvania to Will- iam Penn speaks of the Castle of Windsor and reserves two beaver skins and a fifth of the gold and silver ore (Ibid., p. 185). Georgia was holden as of the honour of Hampton Court in the county of Middlesex at a rent of four shillings for every hundred acres that should be ssttled (Ibid., p. 242).
 * There can now be few, if any, countries outside the British Empire