Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/694

 680 V. BENCH AND BAR here and there in the Paston letters, hints that Fortescue was an object of hatred. A correspondent during Cade's rebeUion says : " The Chief Justice hath waited to be as- saulted all this sevennight nightly in his house, but nothing come as yet, the more pity." It is not uncommon for For- tescue to be represented as more of a politician than a lawyer; but the Year Books of Henry VI. show him to be a consummate master of the common law, whom even Coke mentions with reverence. One decision of his, in the case of Thorpe, Speaker of the House of Commons, is written in our Federal and all our State constitutions. In his books " De Laudibus " and " Monarchy " he shows that he is the first of England's great constitutional lawyers. He points out to his young prince that the Roman maxim, " quidquid principi placuit, habet legis vigorem," has no place in English law ; that the king's power is derived from the people and granted for the preservation of those laws, which protect the subjects' persons and property; that the king cannot change the laws without the consent of the three estates of the realm, the baronage, clergy and commons ; that the Parliament has power because it is representative of the whole people; that the king's power of pardon and the whole domain of equity is the king's for the good of his subjects ; that the limitations upon kingly power are not a humiliation to, but for the glory of the king; that right- eous judgment is his first duty, that the courts of law are his, but he does not act personally in judgment; that the laws of England are better than those of France, because they recognize no torture, because they provide the institu- tion of the jury, carefully regulated courts, a legal profes- sion trained in the great legal university, the Inns of Court, and because all men's rights are equally protected by law. Certainly no nobler picture of a constitutional system has ever been put forth by any English lawyer. It is the pre- cocious development of the three Henries, a system far ahead of the times ; under a strong king like Henry V., England was the first power in Europe; but a weak king like Henry VI., kindly, just, temperate, humane, gentle in his methods, pure and upright of life, the best man who ever