Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/678

 664 V. BENCH AND BAR be found that in his two years' service he provided a number of new remedies. Had the chancellors continued to be pro- fessors of the common law, there would have been no separate chancery system. But after Parning's death the chancellor- ship was again bestowed upon an ecclesiastic. The growing opposition to the church is shown, however, by the Commons' petition to the king in 1371 that only laymen should be appointed to the higher offices. Thereupon Robert de Thorpe, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was made chancellor. On his death John Knivet, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, succeeded to the head of the chancery ; but he remained for only five years, when the office was given to an ecclesiastic. No other layman held the office until Sir Thomas More. It is interesting to note that Parning, after he became chancellor, would return to sit in the law courts, and in 1370 there is the following entry in the Year Book: " Et puis Knivet le chanc. vyent en le place, et le case ltd fuit monstre par les justices et il assent y.^^ ^ Some of the happenings of the time give us some light on contemporary manners. Chief Justice Willoughby in. 1331 was captured by outlaws and compelled to pay a ran- som of ninety marks, — more than one year's salary. Seton, a judge under Edward III., sued a woman who called him in his court " traitor, felon and robber." The inference is that he had decided a case against the lady, but had not impressed her with the correctness of his decision. He recovered damages, but he was given a jury of his peers, that is, a jury of lawyers. The quaint simplicity of those times is shown by Thorpe and Green, two judges, going in state to the House of Lords and asking them what was meant by a statute lately passed. It would not occur to our judges was explained to him hy the judges and he concurred." The words of the last entry show that knowledge of French is passing away. About this time was passed the statute which required all pleadings and judgments in the courts to be couched in English. But the lawyers calmly ignored the statute until the middle of the seventeen hundreds. The reporter of Edward II. 's Year Book was a much better French scholar than the men who reported under Edward III. Serjeant Maynard said that Richard de Winchester reported under Edward II. but he tells us no fact in regard to him, and the name nowhere else appears.
 * " And then Knivet the Chancellor came into the court and the case