Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/643

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 629 day Survey, which enumerated all the lands in England, and ascertained the status of each subject, and the ownership of the land with its burdens and the rents and the services due from tenants of the land, was probably superintended by this great lawyer. William Rufus had for his chief minister a man whom the annalist calls " invictus causidicus," an ever successful pleader. This Ranulf Flambard was learned in the civil and the canon law, and is the first of that long line of trained lawyers, whose duty it was to fill the royal treasury. He worked out the legal principles of relief and wardship. Ecclesiastic though he was, he laid his hands upon the broad lands of the church. All church lands held of the king devolved, upon the death of bishop or abbot, according to Ranulf, upon the king as feudal lord. The great revenue to be derived from farming out these lands was an obvious temptation, but Flambard devised a further improvement. Since the bishop or abbot could not be inducted into office without the king's consent and the payment of a relief, the candidate for high clerical honors was compelled to wait a number of years before receiving his office and at the same time was compelled to pay an ample relief before he received investiture of the lands. It is needless to say that the monk- ish chroniclers have loaded Ranulf's memory with a mass of obloquy. In Rufus' time an event occurred which every lawyer re- calls with peculiar interest. The King contemplated a new palace at Westminster, but only that part of it which con- stitutes Westminster Hall was built. It is true that the Hall has been twice rebuilt, once in Henry III.'s reign, and again under Richard II., but the Hall itself, saving for its higher roof, its windows, and higher walls, is what it was when fin- ished in 1099. In this Hall the courts of England were held for many centuries. As soon as the Court of Common Pleas was fixed in certo loco, it continuously sat there. Later the King's Bench took a portion of it. At one end of the Hall was fixed the marble seat and table of the Chancellor, where his court was held. Thus it happened that for centuries the courts of England were in plain sight of each other. When