Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/171

 The author of Vox Plebis may possibly have been Harry Marten. It is written with a keen sense of humor; the descriptions of conditions in the Tower (where Marten had recently been imprisoned) suggest a first-hand acquaintance with the subject. The author quotes Reynard the Fox, a thing hardly apt to have fallen in the scope of the ordinary Leveller’s reading. The temptation to ascribe anything showing an objective sense of humor to Marten is great. Vox Plebis, p. 53.

A comparatively impartial statement by a professed lawyer as to what the defects and injustices in English legal procedure really were may appropriately follow the Leveller demands. John Cook’s The Vindication Of The Professors & Profession Of The Law, Feb. 6, 1645/6, E. 320 (17), is itself a protest against the tendency of some men of the time to regard all lawyers as rascals, but the book is moderately radical in its viewpoint. Cook would gladly have seen the whole law of England brought into accord with the Mosaic law—the law of God. His recommendations are various; for one thing, the raising of the limit of a suit in forma pauperis, since it is a grievous matter that a poor man cannot sue for twenty shillings without its costing him forty in fees. He objects to the abuse of technical flaws in indictments, wishes the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and of the abuses connected with the action for debt—an action used by pettifoggers as a convenient device for casting a man into prison. A man could be, and often was, imprisoned by one of these actions when the bringer of the action had no proof at all of any debt owed by the defendant. Cook wishes law proceedings to be in English; for he is ashamed to think that a country man should be served with a subpoena in Latin, when very likely he can find no one in five miles able to translate it to him—a badge of the Norman conquest this. Cook urges Parliament to provide courts for the more remote counties of the kingdom; he suggests that to prevent men from fraudulently incurring debts they can never hope to pay, the Parliament should establish in every county an office for the registry of deeds, leases, contracts, etc., so that for a small fee every man may know how land is encumbered; thus men will no longer be enabled to live beyond their estates, or to hold rich mortgages and feign poverty.

Further, he recommends that, to bring about the desirable accord etween the law of England and the laws of God and reason, some grave, udicious man well versed in Scripture and in the common law should consider what changes would serve to bring the one into harmony with he other.