(_For the Mirror._)
William the Conqueror entertained the difficult project of totally
abolishing the English language, and for that purpose, he ordered that
in all schools throughout the kingdom, the youth should be instructed in
the French tongue. Until the reign of Edward III. the pleadings in the
supreme courts of judicature were performed in French, when it was
appointed that the pleas should be pleaded in English; but that they
should be entered or recorded in Latin. The deeds were drawn in the same
language; the laws were composed in that idiom, and no other tongue was
used at court. It became, says Hume, the language of all fashionable
company; and the English themselves ashamed of their own country,
affected to excel in that foreign dialect. At Athens, and even in France
and England, formal and prepared pleadings were prohibited, and it was
unlawful to amuse the court with long, artful harangues; only it was the
settled custom here, in important matters, to begin the pleadings with a
text out of the holy scriptures. It is of late years that eloquence was
admitted to the bar.
The account which the learned judge Hale gives of the lawyers, who
pleaded in the 15th century, does them little honour. He condemns the
reports during the reigns of Henry IV. and V. as inferior to those of
the last twelve years of Edward III. and he speaks but coolly of those
which the reign of Henry VI. produces. Yet this deficiency of
progressive improvement in the common law arose not from a want of
application to the science; since we learn from Fortescue that there
were no fewer than two thousand students attending on the inns of
chancery and of court, in the time of its writer. Gray's-inn, in the
time of Henry VIII. was so incommodious, that "the ancients of this
house were necessitated to lodge double." Indeed until the beginning of
the last century the lawyers lived mostly in their inns of court, or
about Westminster-hall. But a great change has been effected; they are
all now removed to higher ground, squares and genteel neighbourhoods, no
matter how far distant from their chambers.
The number of judges in the courts of Westminster was by no means
certain. Under Henry VI. there were at one time eight judges in the
court of common pleas. Each judge took a solemn oath that "he would take
no fee, pension, gift, reward, or bribe, from any suitor, saving meat
and drink, which should be of no great value." In 1402, the salary of
the chief justice of the king's bench was forty pounds per annum. In
1408, the chief justice of the common pleas had fifty-five marks per
annum. In 1549, the chief justice of the king's bench had an addition of
thirty pounds to his salary, and each justice of the same bench and
common pleas, twenty pounds. At this time, a felony under the value of
twelve pence, was not a capital offence; and twelve pence then was equal
to sixty shillings at the present day.
To Richard III. on whom history has cast innumerable stains, England has
considerable obligations as a legislator. Barrington thus speaks of him:
"Not to mention his causing each act of parliament to be written in
English and to be printed, he was the first prince on the English throne
who enabled the justices of the peace to take bail; and he caused to be
enacted a law against raising money by 'benevolence' which when pleaded
by the citizens of London against Cardinal Wolsey, could only be
answered by an averment, that Richard being a usurper and a murderer of
his nephews, the laws of so wicked a man ought not to be forced." And a
noble biographer, (Bacon's Henry VII.) says, "He was a good lawgiver for
the ease and solace of the common people." Cardinal Wolsey to terrify
the citizens of London into the general loan exacted in 1525, told them
plainly, _that it were better that some should suffer indigence than
that the king at this time should lack, and therefore beware and
resist not, nor ruffle not in the case, for it may fortune to cost some
people their heads_. And says Hume, when Henry VIII. heard that the
commons made a great difficulty of granting the required supply, he was
so provoked that he sent for Edward Montague, one of the members who had
a considerable influence on the house; and he being introduced to his
majesty, had the mortification to hear him speak in these words: _Ho!
man! will they not suffer my bill to pass?_ And laying his hand on
Montague's head, who was then on his knees before him, _get my bill
passed by to-morrow, or else to-morrow this head of yours shall be off_.
This cavalier manner of Henry's succeeded; for next day the bill passed.
Another instance of arbitrary power is worth relating. In Strype's life
of Stow we find, a garden house belonging to an honest citizen of
London, (which chanced to obstruct the improvement of a powerful
favourite. Thomas Cromwell,) "loosed from the foundation, borne on
rollers, and replaced two and twenty feet within the garden," without
the owner's leave being required; nay without his knowledge. The persons
employed, being asked their authority for this extraordinary proceeding,
made only this reply, "That Sir Thomas Cromwell had commanded them to do
it," _and none durst argue the matter_. The father of the antiquary,
Stow, (for it was he that was thus trampled upon,) "was fain to continue
to pay his old rent, without any abatement, for his garden; though half
of it was in this manner taken away."