Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/665

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 651 adroit shift of the other, in fact, the whole picture of the lawsuit as it progressed. These Year Books were written in Norman French, the language of the courts and lawyers. One of the manuscripts shows us what was probably a lawyer's library in the early thirteen hundreds. Besides the reports of cases, it contains a number of statutes of Edward I. and Edward II., Brac- ton's treatise, another treatise on quashing writs, another on the duties of justices, another on pleas of the crown, Meting- ham's work on Essoins, and Hengham's treatise called Mag- num and Parvum. These works, with Britton and the Reg- ister of Writs, would be an ample legal library ; and all these books could be tied together in one manuscript volume. The influence of the profession is apparent in the legis- lative activity of the opening years of Edward I. The statutes then passed were all remedial. Wherever a case was unprovided for, wherever a remedy was defective, wher- ever the law seemed insufficient, the existing law was supple- mented by statutes. Take the statute creating the bill of exceptions. It enjoined upon the trial judge the duty of sealing a bill of exceptions tendered to any of his rulings, and made the bill a part of the record, which could be exam- ined upon error. We know, without any proof of the fact, that this statute was procured by professional opinion. It brought all rulings to the supreme test of an appellate tribu- nal. Henceforth there could be but one rule of law for all Englishmen. The fact that these statutes, such as West- minster II. and Westminster III., are still law in almost every state in this Union, is the best proof of the sagacity of those long forgotten lawyers of Edward's reign. Nowhere is bet- ter shown the wise conservatism of the true lawyer, whose instinct is not to commit waste upon the inheritance, but to repair the splendid edifice of which he is but the life tenant. Still another indication of the growing influence of the profession is given by the impeachment of all the judges before Parliament in the year 1289. Some of the judges impeached bore honored names in the profession. Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, upon trivial charges was fined in a small sum, dismissed from ofiice, and