Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/576

 The Manuscripts of the " Year Books" contents, or even the general nature of them, known to the public. The last seven vol umes of Year Books published in the Rolls Series (12— 1 6 Edward III.) contain refer ences to records illustrating the reported cases, with some extracts making good the deficiencies of the reports themselves; but it is, of course, beyond the province of the ed itor of the Year Books, in that capacity, to touch the unreported cases, which outnum ber enormously the cases reported. The Pica Rolls of the Common Bench of the reign of Edward III., when the court was in full working order, were made up term by term, the individual skins of each term-roll being strongly sewn together at the top with cord. Each skin is about 33 inches long, and ю inches broad. The average number of skins constituting each roll is about five hundred and fifty, and the writing is on both sides of each skin. From these facts some idea may be formed of the amount of legal business transacted in each term at a time at which the laudator îcmporis acti is apt to suppose that litigation was small in quantity, that the administration of the law was simple and inexpensive, and that the law's delays were as yet unknown. Much of the space, it is true, is taken up with matters of minor importance, such as renewals of jury-process, prayers for view and grants of it, entries of Non Pros, etc. The records, however, of cases pleaded to issue would probably be found to average not less than one to a skin, and the total number to be fully ten times that of the re ported cases. These rolls, to which there is no index, and no published calendar, do not in them selves afford any clue to the discovery in them of any case for which search may be made, except the bare name, in the margin, of the County in which the lands in dispute might happen to be, or in which the dispute about other matters had originated. The cases belonging to each County are not brought together, but interspersed with those

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belonging to other counties, so that the whole roll may have to be examined before any particular case can be found. For the pur poses of comparison with the Year Books the labor can be abridged only by making a short abstract of each reported case, and comparing each skin of the roll with the ab stract, so that one examination of the whole roll suffices for all the cases. It need hardly be said that even this is a very laborious process. A project for preparing a Calendar of the Rolls, fan passn with the editing of the Reports, stands over for the present, for want of express Treasury .sanction. Some of the earliest reports relate to pro ceedings before Justices in Eyre, whose Court was superior even to that of the Com mon Bench, though inferior to that of the King's Bench. When the Court of the Eyre was in any County, all the actions of thatCounty which might be pending in the Court of Common Pleas were immediately trans ferred to the jurisdiction of the Justices in Eyre. For this reason the records of the Courts of Eyre in some instances stand in place of those of the Common Bench and are even of greater importance. They in clude Pleas of the Crown as well as Common Pleas, though the two classes are usually kept distinct. The rolls of Common Pleas which are among them resemble those of the Court of Common Pleas, and require the same tech nical knowledge for their interpretation. The use of the Rolls of Parliament in illus tration of the cases reported in the Year Books depends upon a principle well recog nized from the time of Edward I. until the middle of the reign of Richard II. This was not only that Parliament was the high est Court for redressing errors after judg ment given, but also that during the progress of an action even in the Court of Common Pleas, a party might present a petition to the " King in his Council in his Parliament," praying for a direction to the Justices as to the admission of pleadings or the mode of proceeding. When the petition was granted,