chancellors. But with the effect of the growth of these links between the two jurisdictions upon the relations of law and equity, I cannot deal fully, until I have described the literature and the condition of law and equity at the close of this period.

III

THE LITERATURE OF THE LAW

2

Some of the legal literature of this period has already been described the leading works upon pleading,' the chief abridgments of the statutes, the controversial books as to the relations between law and equity,3 some of the books upon practice, and the two reprints of the Register of Writs and the Year Books which have become the standard editions of those works. Here I shall deal with the rest of the printed legal literature of this period. In the first place, I shall say something of the literature of the common law, and in the second place of the literature of equity. Lastly I shall say something of Roger North and his literary works. These works demand and deserve special treatment in a history of English law. They are literature, and not merely legal literature; and the greater part of them is devoted to a description of the legal life of the period by an acute and critical observer who had seen it on all its sides. There are many problems in our legal history which would be elucidated if every century had produced a Roger North.

The Literature of the Common Law

This literature falls under two heads: (1) the Reports; and (2) the Law Books.

(1) The Reports.

In the first place, I shall, as in the preceding period,3 give in tabular form a list of the reports which contain cases decided during this period, and some of the most important facts concerning them. In the second place, I shall say something of the reporters themselves, and of the characteristics of their reports.

1 Vol. v 385-387.

3 Above 516; vol. v 271.

Vol. ii 513 n. 1; vol. v 380.

7 There are a good many MSS. of this

2 Vol. iv 313; above 312-313.

4 Vol. v 381-382.

6 Vol. ii 528-530.

period still unprinted; for instance, in

Hist. MSS. Com. 7th Rep. App. Pt. i at p. 517 there is an account of some legal MSS. in the possession of G. H. Finch, Esq.

8 Vol. v 358-363.

TABLE SHOWING THE REPORTS OF THE LATTER HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

1645-1691

Fortescue

1748

1670-1746

1695-1738

K.B., C.P., Exch., Edited by the Author's MS.

English.

Ch.

author.

Reports Tempore Queen Anne, incorporated into 1737. Improved Ed. vol. xi, anonymous

Q.B., and a few cases Anonymous.

1781 with additions

in C.P.

from the Lutwyche

1669-1703

K.B., C.P., Exch., Ch.

Anonymous.

English.

Some of these reports still retain the characteristics which marked the reports of the preceding period.1 But generally they tend to approach more nearly to the modern style of law reporting. On the whole they are less discursive, and attain a much higher level of accuracy. In the first place, I shall say something of the older characteristics retained by some of these reports, and, in the second place, I shall point out the respects in which they are more satisfactory than the older series.

(i) The older characteristics.

Firstly, some of these reports still continue to be quite as much books of precedents in pleading as reports. This characteristic comes out very strongly in Lutwyche's reports. They are entitled, "Un livre des Entries: contenant aussi un Report des Resolutions del Court sur diverse Exceptions Prises as Pleadings, et sur auters matters en Ley. . . . Et ascuns Observations sur diverse des les Presidents." The third volume of Lord Raymond's reports contains the pleadings in the cases. Similarly we shall see that Saunders' reports are essentially a pleader's book; and that this characteristic has been emphasized by the work done upon them by serjeant Williams and by subsequent editors."

Secondly, the subject matter of some of these reports is arranged under alphabetical heads after the manner of an abridgment. Instances are Salkeld, Lutwyche, and Cases tempore Holt. It is, as we have seen, a plan which was foreshadowed in some of the very early MSS. of the Year Books. Its recrudescence at this period is no doubt due to the fact that no first rate abridgment of the common law had been written since Rolle, and that therefore the lawyers felt the need for books which grouped the newer cases in this convenient manner.

Thirdly, we still get some unsatisfactory reports of the old pattern. Some of them are anonymous; others, which are not anonymous, are inaccurate; others, which bear well-known names, have been posthumously published from MSS., which were probably never prepared by their authors for the press. Let us take one or two examples of these defective reports.

The two series of anonymous reports are Cases tempore Holt, and the miscellaneous set of reports grouped together under the comprehensive title "Modern.'

Of the first of these series, "Giles Jacob-immortalized by Pope as the blunderbuss of law,' and the author of the Lives and Characters of the English poets, Essays on Human Nature