Works: Collected and Edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, Volume 13

Front Cover
Longman, 1872

From inside the book

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 48 - In this I have travelled myself, at the first more cursorily, since with more diligence, and will go on with it, if God and your majesty will give me leave. And I do assure your majesty, I am in good hope, that when Sir Edward Coke's Reports, and my rules and decisions shall come to posterity, there will be, whatsoever is now thought, question, who was the greater lawyer...
Page 244 - May, in the sixteenth year of our Reign, of England, France and Ireland; and of Scotland the one and fiftieth.
Page 367 - So always as the said Statutes, Ordinances and Proceedings as near as conveniently may be, be agreeable to the Laws, Statutes, Government, and Policy of this our Realm of England.
Page 186 - THIS day I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice ; not one cause unheard; the lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make; not one petition unanswered. And this, I think, could not be said in our age before. This I speak not out of ostentation, but out of gladness when I have done my duty. I know men think I cannot continue, if I should thus oppress myself with business : but that account is made. The duties of life are more than life...
Page 43 - I say no more, but that, to give every man his due, had it not been for Sir Edward Coke's Reports, (which, though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extra-jndicial resolutions more than are warranted; yet, they contain infinite good decisions, and rulings over of cases,) the law, by this time, had been almost like a ship without ballast; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time.
Page 75 - I send also a warrant to the lord chancellor, for making forth a writ for a new chief justice, leaving a blank for the name to be supplied by your majesty's presence ; for I never received your majesty's express pleasure in it. If your majesty resolve of Montagu* as I conceive and wish, it is very material, as these times are, that your majesty have some care, that the recorder succeeding be a temperate and discreet man, and assured to your majesty's...
Page 368 - And our will and pleasure is, and by these presents for us our heirs and successors we do grant unto the said...
Page 45 - I dare not advise to cast the law into a new mould. The work, which I propound, tendeth to pruning and grafting the law, and not to ploughing up and planting it again; for such a remove I should hold indeed for a perilous innovation.
Page 180 - That your hands, and the hands of your hands, I mean those about you, be clean and uncorrupt from gifts, from meddling in titles, and from serving of turns, be they of great ones or small ones.
Page 372 - ... allegation, of any such pretext, nor so much as intimated, or insinuated, any such design or purpose. Again, before he came to the islands, he made no difficulty to tell many in express terms, that he meant to surprise and set upon the Mexico fleet...

Bibliographic information