Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/688

 674 V. BENCH AND BAR Both Brian and Danby are sages of the law often cited by Coke as high authority. Choke, a contemporary, served on the bench for many years. His contribution to the law is composed of two erroneous and troublesome dicta. One asserts that if land be granted to a man and his heirs so long as John A'Down has heirs of his body, and John A'Down dies without heir of his body, the feoffment is deter- mined. John Chipman Gray, with an amplitude of learning that has been wasted on a perverse generation, has demon- strated that Coke and Blackstone are in error in following Choke's deliverance. Not less erroneous is Choke's second dictum as to the reversion of the property of a corporation upon its dissolution, but the courts have long disregarded this latter proposition. Another judge, Walter Moyle, who sat through the wars of the Roses, is notable as the progenitor of a most distin- guished legal family. His granddaughter and heiress mar- ried Sir Thomas Finch, descended from an old Norman fam- ily. Their son, Henry Finch, was a celebrated serjeant at law. His son, John Finch, was Attorney General, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and later Lord Keeper under Charles I., as Lord Finch of Daventry. Another grandson^ of the Moyle heiress was Heneage Finch, a celebrated lawyer. His son, another Heneage, was the celebrated chancellor, Lord Nottingham, the Father of Equity and the author of the Statute of Frauds. His son, a third Heneage, became celebrated by his valiant defence of the Seven Bishops and was made Earl of Aylesford. Three earldoms, Winchelsea, Nottingham, and Aylesford, were the rewards of this legal family. About the middle of the fourteen hundreds, just before the wars of the Roses, it became apparent that the salaries paid to the judges were wholly inadequate. In 1440 William Ascough, who was rapidly advanced, was appointed a justice in the Common Pleas. He petitioned the king representing that " ere he had been two years a serjeant, he was called by your Highness to the bench and made justice, whereby all his earnings, which he would have had, and all the fees that he had in England, were and be ceased and expired to