Professorships in America.
[59] Thayer, The Teaching of English Law at Universities in Harvard Law Review, vol. IX., p. 171: ‘Blackstone’s example was immediately followed here.… In 1779 … a chair of law was founded in Virginia at William and Mary College … and in the same year Isaac Royall of Massachusetts, then a resident in London, made his will, giving property to Harvard College for establishing there that professorship of law which still bears his name.’ The Royall professorship was actually founded in 1815 (Officers and Graduates of Harvard, 1900, p. 24). At Cambridge (England) the Downing professorship was founded in 1800.
The Inns of Court.
[60] See Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, 1896 ff.; Calendar of the Records of the Inner Temple, 1896. The records of Gray’s Inn are, so I understand, to be published. See also Philip A. Smith, History of Education for the English Bar, 1860; Joseph Walton, Early History of Legal Studies in England, 1900, read at a meeting of the American Bar Association in 1899. In foreign countries there were gilds or fraternities of lawyers. Thus in Paris the avocats and procureurs about the middle of the fourteenth century formed a fraternity of St Nicholas: ‘dont le chef porte le bâton ou bannière (de là le nom de bâtonnier)’: Brissaud, Histoire du droit français, p. 898. But, though a certain care for the education of apprentices was a natural function of the medieval craft-gild, I cannot find that elsewhere than in England fraternities of legal practitioners took upon themselves to educate students and to give what in effect were degrees, and degrees which admitted to practice in the courts. R. Delachenal, Histoire des avocats au parlement de Paris (Paris, 1885), says that, though not proved, it is probable that already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the avocat had to be either licencié en lois or licencié en décret: in other words, a legal degree given by an university was necessary for the intending practitioner. As regards the England of the same age two interesting questions might be asked. Was there any considerable number of doctors or bachelors of law who were not clergymen? Had the English judge or the English barrister usually been at an university? I am inclined to think that a negative answer should be given to the first question and perhaps to the second also. Apparently Littleton (to take one example) is not claimed by Oxford or Cambridge.
Sir T. Smith and the Inns of Court.
[61] Smith, Inaugural Oration, MS. Baker, XXXVII. 409 (Camb. Univ. Lib.): ‘… At vero nostrates, et Londinenses iurisconsulti, quibuscum disputare, cum ruri sim et extra academiam, non illibenter soleo, qui barbaras tantum et semigallicas nostras leges inspexerint, homines ab omnibus suis humanioribus disciplinis et hac academiae nostrae instructione semotissimi, etiam cum quid e philosophia, theologiave depromptum in quaestione ponatur, Deus bone! quam apte, quamque explicate singula resumunt, quanta cum facilitate et copia, quantaque cum gratia et venustate, vel confirmant sua, vel refellunt aliena! Certe nec dialecticae vim multum in eis desideres, nec eloquentiae splendorem. Eorum oratio est Anglicana quidem, sed non sordida, non inquinata, non trivialis, gravis nonnunquam et copiosa, saepe urbana et faceta, non destituta similitudinum et exemplorum copia, lenis et aequabilis, et pleno velut alveo fluens, nusquam impedita. Quae res tantam mihi eorum hominum admirationem concitavit, ut aliquandiu vehementer optarim, secessionem aliquam ab ista academia facere et Londinum concedere, ut eos in suis ipsis scholis ac circulis disputantes audirem, quod an sim facturus aliquando, cum feriae longae, et quasi solenne iusticium, nostris praelectionibus indicatur, haud equidem pro certo affirmaverim.’
Multiplication of English law books.
[62] Soule, Year Book Bibliography, in Harvard Law Review, vol. XIV., p. 564: ‘In 1553 the field of Year-Book publication was entered by Richard Tottell, who for thirty-eight years occupied it so fully as to admit no rival. There are about 225 known editions of separate Years or groups of Years which bear his imprint or can be surely attributed to his press.… He is pre-eminently the publisher of Year Books, and he so completely put them ‘in print’ and so cheapened their price that he evidently made them a popular and profitable literature.’
In 1550 an English lawyer’s library of printed books might apparently have comprised (besides some Statutes and Year Books) Littleton’s Tenures, The Old Tenures, Statham’s Abridgement, Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, Liber Intrationum, The Old Natura Brevium, perhaps a Registrum Brevium (if that book, printed in 1531, was published before 1553), Institutions or principal grounds etc. [1544], Carta feodi simplicis, [Phaer’s] New book of presidentes, Diversite de courts, Novae Narrationes, Articuli ad novas narrationes, Modus tenendi curiam baronis, Modus tenendi unum hundredum, Fitzherbert’s Justice of the Peace, Perkins’s Profitable Book, Britton, Doctor and Student. A great part of what was put into print was of medieval origin and had been current in manuscript. In 1600 the following might have been added: Glanvill, Bracton, Fitzherbert’s Natura Brevium, Broke’s Abridgement, Broke’s New Cases, Rastell’s Entries, Staundford’s Prerogative and Pleas of the Crown, Crompton’s Justice of the Peace, Crompton’s Authority of Courts, West’s Symbolæography, Theloall’s Digest, Smith’s Commonwealth, Lambard’s Archaionomia and Eirenarcha, Fulbecke’s Direction or Preparative to the Study of the Law [1600], Plowden’s Commentaries, Dyer’s Reports and the first volume of Coke’s Reports [1600]. This represents a great advance. Already Fulbecke in his curious book (which was reprinted as still useful in 1829) attempts a review of English legal literature: a critical estimate of Dyer, Plowden, Staundford, Perkins and other writers. Lambard’s revelation of the Anglo-Saxon laws was not unimportant, for a basis was thus laid for national boasts; and, but for the publication of Glanvill, Bracton and Britton, the work that was done by Coke would have been impossible.
Were any books about Roman law printed in England before 1600, except a few of Gentili’s?