Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/14

  records, writs, books, proceedings, decrees, warrants, accounts, papers, and documents whatsoever of a public nature belonging to His Majesty'.

Of such documents there was not one of any date earlier than the Conquest. Of course I do not mean to tell you that there were not any earlier charters from Sovereigns to their subjects, or any deeds of gift from private individuals to other private individuals or to monasteries. But all such instruments fail to satisfy the definition of a public record. They did not belong to the Sovereign. There is no trace of any Royal Court or any Royal Office in which such instruments were enrolled, or in which counterparts were retained, or in which returned writs were preserved under royal authority. Our system of Public Records is essentially the outcome of the system elaborated by William of Normandy and his French-speaking successors.

William the Conqueror, as King of England, had a Court. I will not ask you to assign too precise a meaning to the word, or to distinguish very clearly between a Court of Justice, a Court at which the Sovereign receives his subjects, and a Council at which he takes advice of those most competent to give it. The Court of our earliest Kings after the Conquest was a Court or Council in all these senses. It was an assemblage chiefly of tenants holding in capite of the King, as of his Crown, including among them the Bishops. They paid their respects to the King usually at certain fixed periods of the year; they, and some others who were experts, gave the King such advice as he might need from them; they lent their names as witnesses to any charters which he might grant; and, with the King, they constituted the highest Court of Justice in the realm.

Among the Officers of State who sat in this Court or Council ex officio, or as experts, I will ask you to fix