I. was very imperfectly acquainted with its history, and we are CHAP. still left much in the dark respecting its duties, and the manner in which it was bestowed in the Saxon times. Then, as long after, the little learning that existed being confined to the clergy, we need not doubt that a post requiring the art of writing and some knowledge of law, was always filled by an ecclesiastic; and as it gave constant access to the person of the King, and was the highway to preferment, even if the precedence and emoluments belonging to it were not very high, it must have been an object struggled for among the ambitious. Human nature being ever the same, we may safely believe that at that early period, as in succeeding ages, it was the prize sometimes of talents and virtue, and sometimes of intrigue and servility. Masters in Chancery. As we approach the era of the Conquest, we find distinct Origin of traces of the Masters in Chancery, who, though in sacred orders, were well trained in jurisprudence, and assisted the Chancellor in preparing writs and grants, as well as in the service of the royal chapel. They formed a sort of college of justice of which he was the head. They all sate in the Wittenagemot, and, as "Law Lords," are supposed to have had great weight in the deliberations of that assembly.* * Or. Jur. chap. xvi. Palgrave's Hist. Eng. Preface. CHAP. A.D. 1066. Chancel lors under early Norman reigns. CHAPTER II. OF THE CHANCELLORS FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE REIGN OF FROM the Conquest downwards we have, with very few interruptions, a complete series of Chancellors. Yet till we reach the reign of Richard I., when records begin which are still extant, containing entries of the transfer of the Great Seal, we can seldom fix the exact date of their appointment; and we glean what is known of them chiefly from the charters which they attested, from contemporary chroniclers, and from monkish histories of the sees to which they were promoted. Few of those who held the office under the Norman monarchs before Henry II. took any prominent part in the conduct of public affairs, and they appear mostly to have confined themselves to their official duties, in making out writs, superintending royal grants, authenticating the acts of the sovereign by affixing the Great Seal to all instruments which ran in his name, and by sitting, in a subordinate capacity, in the Aula Regia to assist in the administration of justice. The office of Chief Justiciar, introduced by William, long continued to confer great splendour on those who held it, while the highest functions of the Chancellor were considered those of being almoner and secretary to the King. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux*, William Fitzosborne, and William de Warenne, successively Justiciars, were men of historical renown; they assisted William in his great military enterprise; they afterwards took an active part in imposing the yoke on the conquered, and they governed the realm as viceroys when he occasionally visited his native dominions. He was William's uterine brother, and, though an ecclesiastic, he was a distinguished military leader. In the famous Bayeux tapestry giving a pictorial history of the Conquest, he makes the greatest figure next to William and Harold. The other Justiciars of this reign were hardly less eminent. Till Thomas à-Becket arose to fix the attention of his own CHAP. II. age and of posterity, the Chancellors were comparatively obscure. They probably, however, were William's advisers in the great changes which he made in the laws and institutions of the country. English writers, with more nationality than discrimination or candour, have attempted to show that he was called Conqueror, merely because he obtained the crown by election instead of hereditary descent.* In all history there is not a more striking instance of subjugation. Not only did almost all the land in the kingdom change handsthe native English being reduced to be the thralls of the invaders but legislative measures were brought forward, either in the sole name of the Sovereign, or through the form of a national council under his control, seeking to alter the language, the jurisprudence, and the manners of the people. † It would have been very interesting to have ascertained distinctly by whose suggestion and instrumentality the French was substituted for the English tongue in all schools and courts of justice; the intricate feudal law of Normandy superseded the simplicity of Saxon tenures; trial by battle was introduced in place of the joint judgment of the Bishop and the Earl in the county court; the separation was brought about between ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions; and the great survey of the kingdom was planned and accomplished, of which we have the result in DOMESDAY, "the most valuable piece of antiquity possessed by any nation."‡ But while there is blazoned before us a roll of all the warlike chiefs who accompanied William in his memorable expedition, and we have a minute account of the life and character of all those who took any prominent part in the battles, sieges, and insurrections which marked his reign, we are left to mere conjecture respecting the manner in which * As in the law of Scotland property acquired by an individual is called his conquest. The vitality of the Anglo-Saxon language and institutions at last prevailed, but there is hardly to be found such a striking instance of race tyrannising over race, as in England during the reigns of the Conqueror and his immediate descendants. Hume. CHAP. justice was administered under him*, and the measures of his civil government were planned and executed. † 11. A.D. 1067. lors of the MAURICE. Made Bishop of London, and resigns Great Seal. But I must now proceed to give the names of William's Chancellors, with such scanty notices of their history as can be furnished from the imperfect materials which are preserved to us. In 1067, the year after the battle of Hastings, when he had obtained the submission of a considerable part of England, although it was not till long after that he reduced the northern and western counties to his rule, he appointed as his first Chancellor, MAURICE, a Norman ecclesiastic, who had accompanied him as his chaplain when he sailed from St. Vallery for the coast of England. We know little with certainty of the acts of this functionary beyond his perusing and sealing a charter by which the Conqueror, after the example of the Confessor, granted large possessions to the abbot and monks of Westminster.‡ In the usual course of promotion, Maurice, being Chancellor, was made Bishop of London. Here we find him highly celebrated for his exertions to rebuild St. Paul's. The year before his consecration the greatest part of the City of A very ample report of the cause célèbre between Odo, as Earl of Kent, and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Penenden Heath, before Chief Justiciary Godfrey, has come down to us, but no notice of any other judicial proceeding in this reign can be traced. In classic antiquity lawgivers were honoured not less than conquerors, and all the most celebrated laws of Rome bore the names of their authors; but in our own history (horresco referens) oblivion seems to await all those who devote themselves to legal reform. We do not know with any certainty who framed the Statutes of Westminster in the time of Edward I., the Statute of Fines, the Statute of Uses, the Statute of Wills, or the Statute of Frauds, although they ought to have been commemorated for conferring lasting benefit on their country. The Grenville Act for the trial of controverted elections was the first which conferred any éclat on the name of its author, and Fox's Libel Act is almost the only other down to our own times. The charter is thus attested, "Ego, Mauritius Cancellarius, favendo legi et sigillavi." 4 Inst. 78. The words of the Conqueror's first charter are curious, Ego, Willielmus, Dei gratia, Rex Anglorum, Dux Normannorum, et Princeps Cenomannorum, hoc præceptum scribere præcepi, et scriptum hoc signo Dominico sic confirmando + stabilivi, nostræque imaginis sigillo insuper assignari curavi," &c. II. London, built of wood, had been consumed by fire, and the CHAP. Cathedral where it now stands, on the site of an ancient temple of Diana, had been almost entirely destroyed. But by his pious exhortations, assisted by a royal grant, it rose from its ashes with new magnificence.* Maurice enjoyed the dignity of Chancellor on his first appointment but for a short space of time, as it seems to have been the policy of William never to allow his great seal to remain long in the same hands. Spelman represents him as having been again Chancellor in 1077†, and there can be no doubt that he continued a person of considerable influence during the whole of this and the succeeding reign. Conduct of cellor Mau rice on the death of We have, however, no distinct account of the part which he again took in public affairs till Rufus was accidentally killed by Sir Walter Tyrrel while hunting in the New Forest. Henry, the king's younger brother, who was of the party, in violation of the superior claims of Rufus. Robert, then absent in Normandy, hastened to London to claim the vacant throne. In those days anointment by a prelate was supposed to give a divine right to kings, and the commencement of a reign was calculated from the day of the coronation, not from the death of the predecessor. The privilege of crowning the Kings of England has always been considered to belong to the Archbishop of Canterbury as Primate, but Anselm from his quarrel with the late King was now in exile. Henry in this extremity applied to Maurice, the Ex-chancellor, and overcame his scruples respecting the law of primogeniture by a share of the royal treasure, which he had secured to himself as he passed through Winchester, and by which history records his usurpation was accomplished. On the third day from the tragical end of Rufus, Maurice placed the crown on the head of the new sovereign in the abbey of Westminster. The Great Seal was now again within his reach, but he preferred the quiet use of his riches, and the hope eagerly cherished, though never realised, of succeeding to the primacy. He died in 1107, still Bishop of London, having seen a • W. Malmesb. De Gestis Pontificum, lib. ii. † Gloss. Series Cancell. Angl. William A. D. 1100. |