presentment if the Church could find no other means of getting a public accuser.2
This compromise on the basis of old customs was effective, except as to the punishment of convicted clerks. On this point Henry had to yield after the murder of Becket in 1170, and thenceforward “benefit of clergy” eventually began to operate as a sort of first offender’s law, for it was the later rule that the culprit escaped punishment for the first offence only on proving his clergy.
THE EXCHEQUER
After the dramatic murder of Becket the interest turns to the rapid development of the administration under Henry II’s officials. The Treasury was under Nigel, Bishop of Ely (a nephew of Henry I’s Justiciar, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury), who further elaborated its constitution and procedure. Finally, having bought the office of Treasurer he conferred it upon his son, Richard fitz Nigel, Bishop of London, who wrote an extremely detailed account of the working of the Exchequer called the Dialogue of the Exchequer (1177-1179).3
The last ten years of the reign are dominated by Ranulf de Glanvill, the Justiciar. A competent general, diplomatist and judge, although an unscrupulous sheriff (he was twice removed from office), his name was attached to the first treatise upon the common law. The date is soon after 1187 and Glanvill’s nephew, Hubert Walter, has been suggested as possibly its author. It is a short, simple book, for the common law was neither very extensive nor very complicated. But for all that, it set the style of legal literature for many centuries to come, for the author of Glanvill invented the method of writing law in the form of a commentary upon the different writs.1
THE PLACE OF HENRY II
There are many other great events of this reign which we shall describe more fully in later chapters of this book. The extension of the system of itinerant justices; the growing definition of the courts of law; the widespread use of the jury; the establishment of the petty assizes2 as speedy methods of trying cases of recent dispossession of land; the Assize of Clarendon (1166) remodelling criminal procedure and systematising the presenting or grand jury;3 the Assize of Northampton (1176) which strengthened the claims of an heir to land against the feudal lord; the Assize of Arms (1181) which reorganised the local defence and police measures—these are only the greatest of the many reforms of Henry II’s reign. In the words of Bishop Stubbs:
“Henry II was far more than an inventor of legal forms or of the machinery of taxation. He was one of the greatest politicians of his time; a man of such wide influence, great estates, and numerous connections, that the whole of the foreign relations of England during the middle ages may be traced directly and distinctly to the results of his alliances and his enmities. He was regarded by the Emperor Frederick, by the Kings of Spain and Sicily, by the rising republics of Lombardy, by the half-savage dynasts of Norway, and by the fainting realm of Palestine as a friend and patron to be secured at any cost. He refused the crowns of Jerusalem and Sicily; he refused to recognise the anti-pope at a moment when the whole influence of the papacy was being employed to embarrass and distress him. His career is full of romantic episodes, and of really great physical exploits.
“Yet the consent of the historians of the time makes him, first and foremost, a legislator and administrator. Ralph Niger, his enemy, tells how year after year he wore out men’s patience with his annual assizes; how he set up an upstart nobility; how he abolished the ancient laws, set aside charters, overthrew municipalities, thirsted for gold, overwhelmed all society with his scutages, his recognitions, and such like. Ralph de Diceto explains how necessary a constant adaptation and readjustment of means was to secure in any degree the pure administration of justice, and lauds the promptness with which he discarded unsatisfactory measures to make way for new experiments. William of Newburgh and Peter of Blois praise him for the very measures that Ralph Niger condemns; his exactions were far less than those of his successors; he was most careful of the public peace; he bore the sword for the punishment of evil doers, but to the peace of the good; he conserved the rights and liberties of the churches; he never imposed any heavy tax on either England or his continental estates, or grieved the Church with undue exactions; his legal activity was especially meritorious after the storm of anarchy which preceded. In every description of his character the same features recur, whether as matters of laudation or of abuse.”4
THE GREAT CHARTERS: LAW SEPARATES FROM ADMINISTRATION
SUMMARY
Henry II was followed successively by his sons Richard I (1189-1199) and John (1199-1216), and his grandson Henry III (1216-1272). During these reigns every sort of strain was placed upon the administration and upon the infant common law. It is a great tribute to his work that they both survived. Richard was absent from the realm for almost the whole of his ten years’ reign; John was involved in disastrous war abroad, civil war at home, insurrection, invasion and interdict. Henry III was a child of nine at his accession, with only his mother’s bracelet for a crown, and yet a few great-hearted nobles, encouraged by the paternal interest of Pope Honorius III, spared the land most of the troubles which usually attended a minority in those days. And soon, by the middle of Henry’s reign, one of his judges, Henry de Bracton, was already preparing material for an immense and detailed treatise on the common law beside which the little book of Glanvill would seem a mere pamphlet, and he tells us that the best cases are those in the earlier years of the reign—so flourishing was the law even in those troubled times. The secret is surely to be found in the permanence of the administration established by the Norman kings, which withstood all these shocks, grew, prospered, and finally (as every administration must) became the parent of new law, and of new legal machinery.
THE POSITION OF THE CROWN
Then, too, the Crown through all these disasters survived the attempts of certain interests which would have reduced its power to ineffectual limits; on the other hand, the opposite tendency of the Crown to use the powerful machinery of government to institute a tyranny was likewise frustrated. And so, on a broad view, both the oppressions and the rebellions of the period appear as efforts to find and maintain the just mean between private liberty and public order, while through it all, steadily and constantly, proceeds the growth of better and more expert judicial institutions, and the development of more and more rules of law, and their organisation into a coherent legal system which already was beginning to separate from the purely administrative machinery of the realm. By the time we reach the second half of Henry III’s reign the judiciary is already distinct from the administration and can stand aside while the national leaders in arms assert the necessity of imposing restraint upon the speed and the direction of so dangerous an engine; while very soon, Parliament will appear with this as one of its main duties.
THE IDEAS OF HUBERT WALTER
Of
