Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/641

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 627 Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, the Marquis of Anglesey, Viscounts Hardinge, Wolseley and Kitchener, and Lords Napier of Magdala and Raglan, while great admirals are represented by Earl Nelson, the Earl of Effingham and Earl Howe, Viscounts Exmouth, St. Vincent, Bridport, and Torrington, and Lords Rodney and Vernon, the representa- tives of lawyers almost fill the benches of the Lords. Lord Thurlow's famous reply to the Duke of Grafton asserted: " The noble duke can not look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to his successful exertions in the profession to which I belong." The King himself is king of Scotland through his descent from Lord Chief Justice Bruce. The Dukes of Beaufort, Devonshire, Manchester, Newcastle, Norfolk, Portland, Northumberland, Rutland and St. Albans are all descended from English judges. Chief Justice Catlin was an ancestor of the Spencer, who married the Marlborough titj^. The Marquises of Aber- gavenny, Ailesbury, Bristol, Camden, Ripon and Townsend, the Earls of Aylesford, Bathurst, Bradford, Buckingham- shire, Cadogan, Cairns, Carlisle, Cottenham, Cowper, Crewe, Eldon, Egerton, Ellesmere, Fortescue, Guildford, Hardwicke, Harrowby, Leicester, Lonsdale, Macclesfield, Mansfield, Sandwich, Selborne, Shrewsbury, Suffolk, Stamford, Veru- 1am, Westmoreland, Nottingham and Winchelsea, and Yar- borough, represent names great in English law. Other titles among the barons, such as Abinger, Bolton, Brougham, Erskine, James of Hereford, Le Despencer, Mowbray and Segrave, Northington, Redesdale, Romilly, St. Leonards, Campbell, Tenterden, Walsingham, Thurlow, and many others, were gained by great lawyers. The fable of the ancients, which school boys read in Ovid's Metamorphoses, divided the history of the world into a golden, a silver, a bronze and an iron age. The golden age " sine lege fidem et rectum colebat." This is in a meas- ure true of the common law. Its first age, without stat- utes, out of its own ample powers, gave a remedy for every wrong. There followed a silver age, " auro deterior" when new remedies could be devised only by statute. Then