Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/681

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 667 be called the age of bronze, on account of the efforts which the law was making to mold itself to fit new conditions. The amplification of the action of trespass, the invention of common recoveries, the dawning action of ejectment, were phenomena that characterize this age. The common law was showing little indication of its coming helplessness in the next age, when the developed jury system was to render it incapable of granting any relief but a sum of money or the recovery of specific real or personal property. And in the realm of constitutional law this Lancastrian age reached higher ground than the law was to again occupy for two hundred years. The reign of Richard II. opens with a frightful tragedy. The effects of the great plague in 1349, the unrest caused by the repressive statutes, the insistence of the landholders upon the villein-services, and the growth of the renting system, resulted in a widening chasm between farmer and laborer, which culminated in Wat Tyler's rebellion. The populace rose over England, and mobs marched on London. The demand was that all serfdom be abolished, and that all vellein services and rentals be commuted for four pence per acre. In London the mob burst into the Tower and murdered the chancellor. Archbishop Sudbury, one of the greatest scholars of his time. But the bitterness was deepest against the lawyers, on account of the parchment records and the actions that had forced many a villein to perform his serv- ices. The Temple, the new school of the lawyers, was sacked and its records destroyed. In Shakespeare's Henry VI., Dick the Butcher cries: "The first thing we do, let's far as printed. Stubbs, Campbell and Foss are, of course, necessary reading. Further general references are: Select Cases in Chancery (Selden Society), Wambaugh's edition of lyittleton's Tenures, Plummer's Introduction to Fortescue's Monarchy, Lord Clermont's Fortescue's De Laudibus, Polling's Order of the Coif, Herbert's Antiquities of the Tnns of Court, Pierce's Inns of Court, Douthwaite's Gray's Inn, Loftie's Inns of Court and Chancery, Dillon's I^aws and Jurisprudence, Kerly's Equitable Jurisdiction, Ames' History of Assumpsit, Tha/er's Prelimi- nary Treatise, Wiirmore on Evidence. Ames' Notes to De I/audibus may be re^A in addition. Reeves now becomes more reliable. Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales has much curious information. Walsingham's Chronicle is valuable. Mr. Holdsworth is to write on The Legal Profes-| sion in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the Law Quarterly Review for 1907. t