Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/663

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 649 //. The Silver Age of the Common Law: From the Accession of Edward I. to the Death of Edward III} The succession of Edward I. in 1272 was practically con- temporaneous with Bracton's death in 1268. A dictum of Sir Wilham Herle, Chief Justice under Edward III. (deliv- ered from the bench), asserts that, "he (Edward I.) was the wisest king that ever was." Hale and Blackstone have repeated this language, and have called him the English Justinian. But Edward was no codifier or founder of legal ( institutions. He simply had the singular good judgment always to keep at hand the best legal advice, and to follow it. He had constantly by his side a very great Italian lawyer, Francis of Accursii. His closest friend was his chancellor, the English lawyer, Robert Burnel.^ The lead- ing advocates of the bar were kept in his service. Bur- nel drew the code of laws called the Statute of Wales, which projected the English law over Wales. Chief Justice Hengham (whom Coke calls Ingham) drew the Statute De Donis and the provision that created the bill of exceptions. Other noted advocates like Inge, Lowther, and Cave drew the other well-known statutes, such as Quia Emptores, Cor- oners, Merchants, etc., which supplied the deficiencies of the existing law and procedure. During his reign the reports of cases, called Year BooksjV open. There was for centuries a tradition that the Year Books were official. Plowden guardedly says that he had heard that four reporters were originally appointed by the king. Bacon is somewhat more positive. Coke swallows the and of Pike; Maitland's Year Books of Edward II, Selden Society; the Liber Assisarum; Maitland's Conveyancer in the Thirteenth Century; Select Pleas in Manorial Courts (Selden Society) ; Placita de Quo War- ranto; Mirror of Magistrates (Selden Society); Thayer's Preliminary Treatise on Evidence; Ames' History of Assumpsit (3 Harv. L. Rev.); Maitland's Register of Writs (3 Harv. L. Rev.) ; Baldwin's Introduction to his edition of Britton; Fleta; Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages; Jenks' Edward I; Pike's History of Crime; the works of Foss, Camp- bell and Stubbs; Reeves' History of English Law is reliable only in regard to the statute book. children.
 * General references for this period : The Year Books of Horwood
 * The last English Papal bishop who left a family of acknowledged