Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/684

 670 V. BENCH AND BAR was compelled to sign an abdication, there was no change in the judiciary. The whole proceeding was in strict legal form, for Chief Justice Thirning yielded up the fealty, homage, and allegiance of all the English people, declared the King deposed, and announced Henry IV. to be his suc- cessor. The deposition took place in the midst of a splendid pageant in Westminster Hall. The Hall had just been remodeled in the last two years of the King's reign. The Chancellor's court and the King's Bench, toward the end of Edward III.'s reign, had joined the Common Pleas in the Hall. King Richard, who had a keen appreciation of archi- tectural beauty, had restored and remodeled the Hall after designs by William of Wykeham. The walls were built higher, the pillars in the hall were removed, and the magnif- icent timber roof, still one of the wonders of architecture, was thrown over the wide hall. Sadly enough, the first use made of the King's structure, after he had rendered it so imposing, was the coronation of his usurping kinsman, Henry IV. Revolutions or changes in dynasty in England have rarely affected the courts. The two Chief Justices and their col- leagues continued to sit in the courts after the new King's accession. One judge, Rickhill, was called upon to answer for a share in the murder of the late King's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, while in prison at Calais. But Rickhill proved that he had no part in the murder, and was allowed to resume his seat upon the bench. This judge, in attempt- ing to draw his own deed, made some memorable law, which is still common learning. By his deed he attempted to antici- pate the law by two centuries, and to settle his lands upon his sons successively in tail, but added a contingent limitation that if any son aliened in fee or in tail, the same lands should go over to the next son in tail. The contingent limitation was held bad as the creation of a remainder, which did not await the natural devolution of the preceding estate, but cut it short by the creation of a freehold beginning in futuro. English law was to await the Statute of Uses before such a limitation became good in a deed, and the Statute of Wills before it became possible by will.