Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/702

 688 V. BENCH AND BAR savage dispute over the merits of their respective editions. In a few years the demand for law books caused the printing of some of the Year Books, and the pubHcation of the Abridgments or Digests of Statham and Fitzherbert. The New Natura Brevium, St. Germain's Doctor and Student, Fitzherbert's Diversity of Courts, and Perkins' Profitable Book, soon appeared. The Year Books grow more and more scrappy, until under Henry VIII. they pass away. But in these latter years they are sad productions. The reporters have lost their French. Such words as " hue and cry,'* " shoes," " boots," and " barley," are not turned into French. The law French degenerated until it resembled modern pho- netic script. A learned lawyer wrote in this wise : " Rich- ardson, C. J. de C. B., at Assizes at Salisbury in summer 1631, fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony; que puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn pur Noy envers le prisoner et son dexter manus am- pute et fixe al gibbet sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de court." The matter of reporting, however, was now taken up by well-kno^ii lawyers and judges. An- derson, Dyer, Owen, Dalison, Popham, Coke, Plowden, Bend- loe, Keilway, and Croke have left valuable reports, all in Norman French. The evidence all points to a complete breakdown in the jury system at this time. The Star Chamber court merely continued a jurisdiction long existent in the king's council; but some portion of the jurisdiction, such as that over cor- ruptions of sheriffs in making jury panels and in false re- turns, over the bribery of jurors, and over riots and unlaw- ful assemblies, was now put into statutory form. Yet the court would not allow even Serjeant Plowden to argue that it was confined in its jurisdiction by the words of the statute. The court was at first a most excellent engine for partic- ular cases, and filled a great public necessity, but under the later Tudors and the Stuarts it became an engine of tyranny. This period was characterized in the criminal law by most shameless oppression in all political cases. The unrestrained