Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/230

 216 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S Richius primus juris Municipalis Apprenticius Cancellarii munus obtinuit: post quern etiam alios episcopos juris Romani peritos, sed plerosque juris municipalis consultos, reges nostri ad hoc munus admoverunt. In hac etiam curia assessores seu Magistri plerumque fuerunt juris Civiles Doctores, et Clericos hujus Curiae antiquitus habuisse eximiam juris civilis scientiam, clarissimum est ex libro Registri Brevium Origi- nalium. . . . In Curia etiam. . . fere omnes fuerunt anti- quitus Episcopi Praelative, in legibus Romanis vel utroque juri versati Magistri. . . plerumque Juris Civilis Professo- res, quibus ex jurisdictione ejus Curiae potestas judicandi ex aequo et bono demandata est. Ad omnes enim curias in quibus non m£rum et Consuetudinarium jus, sed aequitas spectanda est, nullius gentis leges tam accommodatae sunt, quam jus Civile Romanorum, quod amplissimas continet regu- las de Contractibus, Testamentis, Delictis, Judiciis et omni- bus humanis actionibus.'^ The general character of the Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery may be gathered from a speech of James I. in the Star Chamber in which he said : " Where the rigour of the law in many cases will undo a subject, there the Chancery tempers the law with equity, and so mixes mercy with jus- tice : " ^ and the " Doctor and Student " of the reign of Henry VIII., reads : " Conscience never resisteth the law nor addeth to it, but only when the law is directly in itself against the Law of God or of reason ... in other things Aequitas sequitur legem." ^ This Equitable Jurisdiction has been cornpared with the Jurisdiction of the Praetors, both being used as a means of alleviating the rigour of the older law. ^ Both Equity and the Jus Praetorium tend to become as rigid as the systems they originally modified; both are supported by fictions, in the one case of a pre-existing state of nature or Golden age, of whose laws fragments survive and are embodied in the Praetor's Edict, in the other of a King, whose Conscience Spence i. 409.
 * Cited Spence, i. 409 note.
 * Probably derived from "Jus praetorium jus civile tuhsequitur.*
 * Maine, Ancient Law, p. 68,