Bench and Bar in the Middle Ages.
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THE BENCH AND THE BAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES. UP to the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Edward III, the pleadings in the courts were carried on in Norman-French. But the people naturally complained of this. They said that their rights and liberties and lives were subject to laws which they could not understand; and they knew not what was said either for or against them "by their serjeants or other pleaders." A statute was therefore passed, in 1362, which enacted that all pleas should be pleaded, defended, debated, and judged in the English tongue, but that they should be entered and enrolled in Latin. Nothing, indeed, could be more barbarous than the language used in courts of law. An examination of their phrases seems to show that they thought in English, and clothed English ideas and sentences with foreign words; and the practice of jum bling together French, Latin, and English in pleadings and indictments continued until a comparatively recent period. During the Protectorate of Cromwell an act was passed for the introduction of the English language into the pleadings, but at the Restoration, although all proceedings in private causes, which had been commenced since the death of Charles I, were legalized, that act was limited in duration to August 1, 1660. After that period the absurd use of an unknown tongue was renewed, and continued to be employed for seventy years longer, till in the reign of George II, English was again substituted by an act of the legislature, and litigants were permitted to understand the allegations for and against them. To give an idea of the jargon of legal language in old times, we quote the following from the marginal notes of Chief Justice Trely to Dyer's Reports : — "Richardson C. B. de C. B. at Assizes at Salisbury in summer 163 1 fuit assault per Prisoner la condemne pur Felony: — que
puis son condemnation ject un Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ces immediately fuit Indictment drawn pur Noyenvers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute et fixe al Gibbet sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court." The chief justiciary, or Justiciarius Angliae, was the chief officer next the king in the Curia Regis. In the sovereign's absence he presided there in all civil and criminal causes, and also in the exchequer, having, by virtue of his office, the principal manage ment of the royal revenue; and, in addition to this, the entire government of the State was intrusted to him, as regent, when the king was absent from the realm. After a period of two hundred years, this office was discontinued in the reign of Henry III, when its principal judicial duties were transferred to the chief justice of the king's bench. The title of chief justice of the king's bench was not given to the head of the king's court until 1268, in the fifty-second year of Henry III, when a salary of I00 marks was assigned to the office, although a yearly allowance of 1,000 marks had been formerly granted to the chief justiciaries. The chancellor, Canccllarius Regis, was another officer of the Curia Regis, but at first his rank was very inferior to that which he afterwards attained. He probably acted as a kind of secretary, and this rendered it almost necessary that he should be an ecclesi astic, for few except the clergy in those days could read or write. It was his province to prepare the various writs and precepts that issued out of the Curia Regis, and to super vise the royal charters and grants to which the king's seal was attached. We have no information as to the mode in which a mere clerk or secretary began to exercise judicial functions until at last he became a high officer of the state, but most probably ques
