XI. CHAP. cellor, and the impressions of the private seals with which the purse containing the Great Seal was guarded, being broken, it was taken therefrom and delivered to the said Ralph de Baldock, to be kept by him as Chancellor." His educa tion and rise. Death of De Baldock, by industry and ability, had reached his present high station from an obscure origin. He studied at Merton College, Oxford, and made himself master of all the learning of the times. He wrote in Latin " Annals of the English Nation," a work which was praised in his lifetime, although it has not come down to us. When appointed Bishop of London, he gained great fame by the splendid repair of St. Paul's Cathedral at his cost, and it was on this occasion that the immense collection of ox skulls were dug up, which fortified the tradition that here had stood a great temple of Diana. Having received the Great Seal he remained stationary, Edward I. devoting himself to his official duties, till news reached London of the death of the King. Edward, at the head of a mighty army, was marching for Scotland to take vengeance for the defeat which his general, Aymer de Valence, had sustained from Robert Bruce, and (as he hoped) finally to subjugate the Scottish nation; but he sickened and died at Burgh on Sands, near Carlisle, on the 7th of July 1307, in the 69th year of his age, and the 35th of his reign. July 7. 1307. Accession of Edward II. Removal of In the present day such an event as the demise of the Crown would be known in a few hours all over the kingdom; but for a period of eighteen days the news of the death of Edward I. did not reach the Chancellor in London, who, down to the 25th of July, continued to seal writs as usual, unconscious that a new reign had commenced. Letters of Privy Seal were then received from the new King, ordering that his father's seal should be sent to him under the seal of the Chancellor, and accordingly he received it into his own hands at Carlisle, on the 2d of August. + His eagerness to change the Chancellor in whom his father de Baldock. had confided, showed that the influence of personal favourites Rot. Fin. 35 Ed. 1. m. l. Rot. Pat. 35 Ed. 1. m. l. Rot. Fin. 1 Ed. 2. m. 11. was already felt, and was a prelude to his own misfortunes and СНАР. the disgrace which he brought upon the country. XI. His death. tion of Chancellor in the reign of Edw. I. De Baldock, freed from the cares of office, spent the remainder of his days in the pursuit of literature and the services of religion. He died on the 24th of July, 1313. Although we have no trace of the decisions of the Chan- Jurisdiccellors of Edward I., we know, from recent discoveries in the Tower of London, that they exercised important judicial functions both in the King's council and in their own court, where they sometimes had the assistance of others, and sometimes sat alone. No case of importance was heard in the Council when the Chancellor was absent; and cases were referred by the counsel for his consideration in Chancery, either by himself, or with the advice of specified persons whom he was to summon to assist him. Sometimes the subject of these suits was such as would now only be taken cognisance of in courts of common law, -as disturbance of right of pasture; but others were of a nature that would now be properly considered in a court of equity, as assignment of dower, a discovery of facts by the examination of the defendant, and the exercise of the visitatorial power of the Chancellor representing the Sovereign. law. to law reformers. All writers who have touched upon our juridical history Improvehave highly extolled the legal improvements which distin- ments in guished the reign of Edward I., without giving the slightest credit for them to any one except the King himself; but if he is to be denominated the English Justinian, it should be made known who were the Trebonians who were employed by him: and the English nation owes a debt of gratitude to Gratitude the Chancellors, who must have framed and revised the statutes which are the foundation of our judicial system, who must, by explanation and argument, have obtained for them the sanction of Parliament, and who must have watched over their construction and operation when they first passed into law. I shall rejoice if I succeed in doing tardy justice to the memory of Robert Burnel, decidedly the first in this class, and if I attract notice to his successors, who walked in his footsteps. To them, too, we are probably indebted for XI. CHAP. the treatises entitled "Fleta*" and "Britton †," which are said to have been written at the request of the King, and which, though inferior in style and arrangement to Bracton, Law books. are wonderful performances for such an age, and make the practitioners of the present day, who are bewildered in the midst of an immense legal library, envy the good fortune of their predecessors who, in a few manuscript volumes, copied by their own hand, and constantly accompanying them, could speedily and clearly discover all that was known on every point that might arise. We now approach a period when civil strife and national misfortune suspended all improvement, and when a career of faction and violence terminated in the deposition and murder of the Sovereign. ‡ * Fleta must have been written after the thirteenth year of the King, and not much later; for it frequently quotes the statute of Westminster the second, without referring to the later statutes of the reign. The title is taken from its having been written in the Fleet Prison. † Britton has been attributed to John Breton, Bishop of Hereford; but this cannot be correct, for he died in the third year of the King, and the Treatise quotes the statutes of the thirteenth. It set the example of writing law books in French, which was followed for four centuries. By the kindness of my friend Mr. T. Duffus Hardy, I am enabled to present to the reader the following curious specimens from the records in the Tower, not hitherto made public, of petitions to the Council, and the answers indorsed upon them in the reign of Edward I. 6 Ed. 1. The Abbot and Convent of Bardney pray the King to have his Letters Patent of Protection. Resp. "Veniat ad Cancellariam, ut fiat ei quod graciose fieri poterit." 6 Ed. 1. Petitions of Edmund, the King's brother. Resp. "Secunda petitio de Foresta ponatur in respectum usque adventum Resp. 18 Ed. 1. Petition of the Earl of Oxford. "Audiatur in Cancellarii, ut fiat ei justicia." over them. Convents of London pray the King to appoint a skilful Custos Resp. "Preceptum est Cancellario quod provideat de idoneo Custode.' 18 Ed. 1. The King's tenants of Aulton complain that Adam Gordon ejected them from their pasture, contrary to the tenor of the King's writ. Resp. "Veniant partes coram Cancellar. et ostendat ei Adam quare ipsos ejecit, et fiat eis justitia." 18 Ed. 1. The men of Grendon complain to the King, &c. Resp. "Cancellar. vocat justic. provideat eis remedium, et aliis in hoc casu perpetuo duratur." 33 Ed. 1. Petition concerning concealment of Dower. Resp. -“veniant coram Cancellario et respondeant Regi de concelamento et ibi fiat remedium tam pro Rege quam pro Petente." 33 Ed. 1. Petition of the Clerks and Canons of the Free Chapel in the Castle of Hastings, disputing the claim of Ordinary Jurisdiction by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Resp. "Ita responsum est. Vocetur coram Cancellario et audiatur ille qui sequitur pro Rege." 35 Ed. 1. Petition of Henry Gare and others. "Ita responsum est. Quia testatum est per Cancellar. et Clericos Cancellar. quod quando, &c." In the 5 Ed. 1. there is a writ of Privy Seal directed to the Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls, enclosing a petition, and requiring them to give such remedy as to them should appear to be consonant to honesty. Dioc. on Jud. Auth. of M. R. 28. - The ordinance 8 Ed. 1. requiring that petitions of grace and favour should first be brought before the King and Council by the Chancellor, shows that he was still considered as having only a delegated authority in such matters; but the statute of Acton Burnel, 11 Ed. 1., distinctly recognises the Chancery as a separate court. CHAP. XI. CHAP. July 8. 1307. Accession of Ed ward II. John de the second time. CHAPTER XII. CHANCELLORS DURING THE REIGN OF EDWARD II. It is not certainly known from records or otherwise, how the young King disposed of the Great Seal from the time when he received it at Carlisle till his return to London in the autumn of the year 1307. He probably carried it with him into Scotland in the short and inglorious campaign which he then made in that country,-forgetting alike what the exigencies of justice required in his own dominions, and the dying injunctions of his father to lead on the expedition with the utmost energy, and never to desist till he had reduced the Scottish nation to complete subjection. From the hour of his accession to the throne, he betrayed an utter incapacity for government, and an unconquerable aversion to all serious business. He seems for a long time to have appointed neither Chancellor nor Keeper of the Seal. He retreated without striking a blow,—disbanded his army, and thought of nothing but conferring power and places on his favourite, Piers Ga veston. Whilst the Barons, from the beginning, showed the utmost Chancellor indignation at the advancement of this upstart, John de Langton, Bishop of Chichester, who had been Chancellor in the late reign, formed a coalition with him, and in recompence was restored to his former office. It was thought even by the Gascon youth himself, that it would have been too great an outrage at once to have made him Chancellor, although, as we shall see, he was ere long intrusted with Seal as Keeper. The two years during which John de Langton was now Chancellor, were chiefly occupied with the disputes between A charge was afterwards brought against Gaveston of having about this time put the Great Seal to blank charters, which he filled up according to his fancy. |