Chapter LI: Part 51

When, as a consequence of the Albigensian wars, the dominions
of the Counts of Toulouse were broken up and absorbed for the
most part in the domain of the French crown, the country which
had been chiefly ravaged in those wars, including Septimania
and much of the old county of Toulouse, acquired the name by
which its language was known—Languedoc. The 'langue d'oc'
was spoken likewise in Provence and in Aquitaine; but it gave
a definite geographical name only to the region between the
Rhone and the Garonne.

See ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1217-1229;
also, PROVENCE: A. D. 1179-1207.

LANNES, Marshal, Campaigns of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY);
GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (OCTOBER);
SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER),
1808-1809 (DECEMBER-MARCH), 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY);
and GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE).

LANSDOWNE, Lord, The Indian administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1880-1893.

----------LAON: Start--------

LAON:
The last capital of the Carolingian kings.

The rock-lifted castle and stronghold of Laon, situated in the
modern department of Aisne, about 74 miles northeast from
Paris, was the last refuge and capital—sometimes the sole
dominion—of the Carolingian kings, in their final struggle
with the new dynasty sprung from the Dukes of France. The
"King of Laon" and the "King of St. Denis," as the contestants
are sometimes called, disputed with one another for a monarchy
which was small when the sovereignty of the two had been
united in one. In 991 the "King of Laon" was betrayed to his
rival, Hugh Capet, and died in prison. "Laon ceased to be a
capital, and became a quiet country town; the castle, relic of
those days, stood till 1832, when it was rased to the ground."

_G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
volume 1, book 3, chapter 2._

ALSO IN:
_Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
book 1, part 2, chapter 4,
parts 1-2 (volume 2)._

See, also,
FRANCE: A. D. 877-987.

LAON: A. D. 1594.
Siege and capture by Henry IV.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

LAON, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH).

----------LAON: End--------

LAPITHÆ, The.

A race which occupied in early times the valley of the Peneus,
in Thessaly; "a race which derived its origin from Almopia in
Macedonia, and was at least very nearly connected with the
Minyans and Æolians of Ephyra."

_C. O. Müller,
History and Antiquity of the Doric Race,
book 1, chapter 1._

LA PLATA, Provinces of.

See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.

LA PUERTA, Battle of (1814).

See COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1810-1821.

LARGS, Battle of.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1263.

LARISSA.

There were several ancient cities in Greece and Asia Minor
called Larissa.

See ARGOS, and PERRHÆBIANS.

LAROCHEJACQUELIN, Henri de, and the insurrection in La Vendée.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (MARCH-APRIL); (JUNE);
and (JULY-DECEMBER).

LA ROCHELLE.

See ROCHELLE.

LA ROTHIERÈ, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH).

LA SALLE'S EXPLORATIONS.

See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687.

LAS CASAS, The humane labors of.

See SLAVERY: MODERN: OF THE INDIANS.

LAS CRUCES, Battle of.

See MEXICO: A. D. 1810-1819.

LASSI, LAZZI, The.

See LÆTI.

LASWARI, Battle of (1803).

See INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805.

LATERAN, The.

"The Lateran derives its name from a rich patrician family,
whose estates were confiscated by Nero. … It afterwards
became an imperial residence, and a portion of it … was
given by Constantine to Pope Melchiades in 312,—a donation
which was confirmed to St. Sylvester, in whose reign the first
basilica was built here. … The ancient Palace of the Lateran
was the residence of the popes for nearly 1,000 years. … The
modern Palace of the Lateran was built from designs of Fontana
by Sixtus V. In 1693 Innocent XII. turned it into a
hospital,—in 1438 Gregory XVI. appropriated it as a museum."

_A. J. C. Hare,
Walks in Rome,
chapter 13._

LATHES OF KENT.

"The county of Kent [England] is divided into six 'lathes,' of
nearly equal size, having the jurisdiction of the hundreds in
other shires. The lathe may be derived from the Jutish
'lething' (in modern Danish 'leding')—a military levy."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
chapter 1, foot-note._

LATHOM HOUSE, Siege of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (JANUARY).

LATIFUNDIA.

The great slave-tilled estates of the Romans, which swallowed
up the properties of the small land-holders of earlier times,
were called Latifundia.

LATIN CHURCH, The.

The Roman Catholic Church (see PAPACY) is often referred to as
the Latin Church, in distinction from the Greek or Orthodox
Church of the East.

LATIN EMPIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

See ROMANIA, THE EMPIRE OF.

LATIN LANGUAGE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.

{1954}

"LATIN NAME," The.

"We must … explain what was meant in the sixth century of
Rome [third century B. C.] by the 'Latin name.' … The Latin
name was now extended far beyond its old geographical limits,
and was represented by a multitude of flourishing cities
scattered over the whole of Italy, from the frontier of
Cisalpine Gaul to the southern extremity of Apulia. … Not
that they were Latins in their origin, or connected with the
cities of the old Latium: on the contrary they were by
extraction Romans; they were colonies founded by the Roman
people, and consisting of Roman Citizens: but the Roman
government had resolved that, in their political relations,
they should be considered, not as Romans, but as Latins; and
the Roman settlers, in consideration of the advantages which
they enjoyed as colonists, were content to descend politically
to a lower condition than that which they had received as
their birthright. The states of the Latin name, whether cities
of old Latium or Roman colonies, all enjoyed their own laws
and municipal government, like the other allies; and all were,
like the other allies, subject to the sovereign dominion of
the Romans. They were also so much regarded as foreigners that
they could not buy or inherit land from Roman citizens; nor
had they generally the right of intermarriage with Romans. But
they had two peculiar privileges: one, that any Latin who left
behind him a son in his own city, to perpetuate his family
there, might remove to Rome, and acquire the Roman franchise;
the other, that every person who had held any magistracy or
distinguished office in a Latin state, might become at once a
Roman citizen."

_T. Arnold,
History of Rome,
chapter 41._

LATINS, Subjugation of, by the Romans.

See ROME: B. C. 339-338.

LATIUM. THE OLD LATINS.

"The plain of Latium must have been in primeval times the
scene of the grandest conflicts of nature, while the slowly
formative agency of water deposited, and the eruptions of
mighty volcanoes upheaved, the successive strata of that soil
on which was to be decided the question to what people the
sovereignty of the world should belong. Latium is bounded on
the east by the mountains of the Sabines and Aequi, which form
part of the Apennines; and on the south by the Volscian range
rising to the height of 4,000 feet, which is separated from
the main chain of the Apennines by the ancient territory of
the Hernici, the table-land of the Sacco (Trerus, a tributary
of the Liris), and stretching in a westerly direction
terminates in the promontory of Terracina. On the west its
boundary is the sea, which on this part of the coast forms but
few and indifferent harbours. On the north it imperceptibly
merges into the broad highlands of Etruria. The region thus
enclosed forms a magnificent plain traversed by the Tiber, the
'mountain-stream' which issues from the Umbrian, and by the
Anio, which rises in the Sabine mountains. Hills here and
there emerge, like islands, from the plain; some of them steep
limestone cliffs, such as that of Soracte in the north-east,
and that of the Circeian promontory on the south-west, as well
as the similar though lower height of the Janiculum near Rome;
others volcanic elevations, whose extinct craters had become
converted into lakes which in some cases still exist; the most
important of these is the Alban range, which, free on every
side, stands forth from the plain between the Volscian chain
and the river Tiber. Here settled the stock which is known to
history under the name of the Latins, or, as they were
subsequently called by way of distinction from the Latin
communities beyond the bounds of Latium, the 'Old Latins'
('prisci Latini'). But the territory occupied by them, the
district of Latium, was only a small portion of the central
plain of Italy. All the country north of the Tiber was to the
Latins a foreign and even hostile domain, with whose
inhabitants no lasting alliance, no public peace, was
possible, and such armistices as were concluded appear always
to have been for a limited period. The Tiber formed the
northern boundary from early times. … We find, at the time
when our history begins, the flat and marshy tracts to the
south of the Alban range in the hands of Umbro-Sabellian
stocks, the Rutuli and Volsci; Ardea and Velitrae are no
longer in the number of originally Latin towns. Only the
central portion of that region between the Tiber, the spurs of
the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and the sea—a district of
about 700 square miles, not much larger than the present
canton of Zurich—was Latium proper, the 'plain,' as it
appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte
Cavo. Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously
flat. With the exception of the sea-beach which is sandy and
formed in part by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is
everywhere broken by hills of tufa moderate in height, though
often somewhat steep, and by deep fissures of the ground.
These alternating elevations and depressions of the surface
lead to the formation of lakes in winter; and the exhalations
proceeding in the heat of summer from the putrescent organic
substances which they contain engender that noxious
fever-laden atmosphere, which in ancient times tainted the
district as it taints it at the present day."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 3._

See, also, ITALY, ANCIENT.

LATT, OR LIDUS, The.

See SLAVERY: MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

LATTER DAY SAINTS, Church of.

See MORMONISM: A. D. 1805-1830.

LAUD, Archbishop, Church tyranny of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1633-1640.

LAUDER BRIDGE.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1482-1488.

LAUDERDALE, Duke of.
His oppression in Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1669-1679.

LAUFFENBURG, Captured by Duke Bernhard (1637).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

LAURAS.

"The institution of Lauras was the connecting link between the
hermitage and the monastery, in the later and more ordinary
use of that word. … A Laura was an aggregation of separate
cells, under the not very strongly defined control of a
superior, the inmates meeting together only on the first and
last days, the old and new Sabbaths, of each week, for their
common meal in the refectory and for common worship. … The
origin of the word 'Laura' is uncertain. … Probably it is
another form of 'labra,' the popular term in Alexandria for an
alley or narrow court."

_I. G. Smith,
Christian Monasticism,
pages 38-39._

{1955}

LAUREATE, English Poets.

"From the appointment of Chaucer about five hundred years have
elapsed, and during that period a long line of poets have held
the title of Laureate. For the first two hundred years they
were somewhat irregularly appointed, but from the creation of
Richard Edwards in 1561, they come down to the present time
without interruption. The selection of the Laureate has not
always been a wise one, but the list contains the names of a
few of our greatest authors, and the honour was certainly
worthily bestowed upon Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John
Dryden, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, and Alfred
Tennyson. As the custom of crowning successful poets appears
to have been in use since the origin of poetry itself, the
office of Poet Laureate can certainly boast of considerable
antiquity, and the laurel wreath of the Greeks and Romans was
an envied trophy long before our Druidical forefathers held
aloft the mistletoe bough in their mystic rites. From what
foreign nation we first borrowed the idea of a King of the
Poets is doubtful."

_W. Hamilton, Origin of the Office of Poet Laureate
(Royal Historical Society, Transactions, volume 8)._

The following is a list of the Poets Laureate of England, with
the dates of their appointment:

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1368;
Sir John Gower, 1400;
Henry Scogan;
John Kay;
Andrew Bernard, 1486;
John Skelton, 1489;
Robert Whittington, 1512;
Richard Edwards, 1561;
Edmund Spenser, 1590;
Samuel Daniel, 1598;
Ben Jonson, 1616;
Sir William Davenant, 1638;
John Dryden, 1670;
Thomas Shadwell, 1688;
Nahum Tate, 1692;
Nicholas Rowe, 1715;
Rev. Laurence Eusden, 1718;
Colley Cibber, 1730;
William Whitehead, 1757;
Thomas Warton, 1785;
Henry James Pye, 1790;
Robert Southey, 1813;
William Wordsworth, 1843;
Alfred Tennyson, 1850.

_W. Hamilton,
The Poets Laureate of England._

LAURIUM, Silver Mines of.

These mines, in Attica, were owned and worked at an early time
by the Athenian state, and seem to have yielded a large
revenue, more or less of which was divided among the citizens.
It was by persuading the Athenians to forego that division
that Themistocles secured money to build the fleet which made
Athens a great naval power. The mines were situated in the
southern part of Attica, in a district of low hills, not far
from the promontory of Sunium.

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 39._

LAUSITZ.

See BRANDENBURG.

LAUTULÆ, Battle of.

See ROME: B. C. 343-290.

LAW, John, and his Mississippi Scheme.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1717-1720;
and LOUISIANA: A. D. 1717-1718.

----------LAW: Start----------

LAW. [Prepared for this work by Austin Abbott, Dean of the
New York University Law School.]

The subject is here treated with reference to the history of
the rights of persons and property, and that of procedure,
rather than in its political and economic aspects, which are
discussed under other heads. And those parts of the history of
law thus considered which enter into our present systems are
given the preference in space,—purely historical matters,
such as the Roman Law, being treated elsewhere, as indicated
in the references placed at the end of this article:

----------ADMIRALTY LAW: Start----------

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1183.
Law as to Shipwrecks.

"The Emperor Constantine, or Antonine (for there is some doubt
as to which it was), had the honour of being the first to
renounce the claim to shipwrecked property in favor of the
rightful owner. But the inhuman customs on this subject were
too deeply rooted to be eradicated by the wisdom and vigilance
of the Roman law givers. The legislation in favor of the
unfortunate was disregarded by succeeding emperors, and when
the empire itself was overturned by the northern barbarians,
the laws of humanity were swept away in the tempest, and the
continual depredations of the Saxons and Normans induced the
inhabitants of the western coasts of Europe to treat all
navigators who were thrown by the perils of the sea upon their
shores as pirates, and to punish them as such, without inquiry
or discrimination. The Emperor Andronicus Comnenus, who
reigned at Constantinople in 1183, made great efforts to
repress this inhuman practice. His edict was worthy of the
highest praise, but it ceased to be put in execution after his
death. … Valin says, it was reserved to the ordinances of
Lewis XIV. to put the finishing stroke towards the extinction
of this species of piracy, by declaring that shipwrecked
persons and property were placed under the special protection
and safe guard of the crown, and the punishment of death
without hope of pardon, was pronounced against the guilty."

_James Kent,
International Law,
edited by J. T. Abdy, page 31._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1537.
Jurisdiction.

The Act of 28 Henry VIII., c. 15, granted jurisdiction to the
Lord High Admiral of England.

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1575.
Jurisdiction.

"The Request of the Judge of the Admiralty, to the Lord Chief
Justice of her Majesty's Bench, and his Colleagues, and the
Judges' Agreement 7th May 1575,"—by which the long
controversy between these Courts as to their relative
jurisdiction was terminated, will be found in full in

_Benedict's American Admiralty,
3d edition, page 41._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1664.
Tide-mark.

The space between high and low water mark is to be taken as
part of the sea, when the tide is in.

_Erastus C. Benedict,
American Admiralty, 3d edition,
by Robert D. Benedict, page 35,
citing Sir John Constable's Case,
Anderson's Rep. 89._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1789.
United States Judiciary Act.

The Act of 1789 declared admiralty jurisdiction to extend to
all cases "where the seizures are made on waters which are
navigable from the sea by vessels of ten or more tons
burthen."

_Judiciary Act,
United States Stat. at Large,
volume 1, page 76._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1798.
Lord Stowell and Admiralty Law.

"Lord Mansfield, at a very early period of his judicial life,
introduced to the notice of the English bar the Rhodian laws,
the Consolato del mare, the laws of Oleron, the treatises of
Roccus, the laws of Wisbuy, and, above all, the marine
ordinances of Louis XIV., and the commentary of Valin. These
authorities were cited by him in Luke v. Lyde [2 Burr. 882],
and from that time a new direction was given to English
studies, and new vigor, and more liberal and enlarged views,
communicated to forensic investigations.
{1956}
Since the year 1798, the decisions of Sir William Scott (now
Lord Stowell) on the admiralty side of Westminster Hall, have
been read and admired in every region of the republic of
letters, as models of the most cultivated and the most
enlightened human reason. … The doctrines are there reasoned
out at large, and practically applied. The arguments at the
bar, and the opinions from the bench, are intermingled with
the greatest reflections, … the soundest policy, and a
thorough acquaintance with all the various topics which
concern the great social interests of mankind."

_James Kent,
Commentaries,
part 5, lecture 42._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1841-1842.
Jurisdiction.

The act 3 and 4 Vic., c. 65, restored to the English Admiralty
some jurisdiction of which it had been deprived by the Common
Law Courts.

_Benedict's Am. Admiralty,
page 56._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1845.
Extension of Admiralty Jurisdiction.

"It took the Supreme Court of the United States more than
fifty years to reject the antiquated doctrine of the English
courts, that admiralty jurisdiction was confined to salt
water, or water where the tide ebbed and flowed. Congress in
1845 passed an act extending the admiralty jurisdiction of the
Federal courts to certain cases upon the great lakes, and the
navigable waters connecting the same. The constitutionality of
this act was seriously questioned, and it was not till 1851
that the Supreme Court, by a divided court, in the case of the
Genesee Chief, which collided with another vessel on Lake
Ontario, sustained the constitutionality of the act, and
repudiated the absurd doctrine that tides had anything to do
with the admiralty jurisdiction conferred by the constitution
upon Federal courts."

_Lyman Trumbull,
Precedent versus Justice, American Law Review,
volume 27, page 324._

See, also
_Act of 1845, 5 U. S. Stat. at L. 726._

ADMIRALTY LAW: A. D. 1873.
Division of Loss in case of Collision
settled by Judicature Act.

"The rule that where both ships are at fault for a collision
each shall recover half his loss from the other, contradicts
the old rule of the common law that a plaintiff who is guilty
of contributory negligence can recover nothing. This conflict
between the common law and the law of the Admiralty was put an
end to in 1873 by the Judicature Act of that year, which (s.
25, subs. 9) provides that 'if both ships shall be found to
have been in fault' the Admiralty rule shall prevail. …
There can be no doubt that in some instances it works positive
injustice; as where it prevents the innocent cargo-owner from
recovering more than half his loss from one of the two
wrong-doing shipowners. And recent cases show that it works in
an arbitrary and uncertain manner when combined with the
enactments limiting the shipowner's liability for damage done
by his ship. The fact, however, remains, that it has been in
operation with the approval of the shipping community for at
least two centuries, and probably for a much longer period;
and an attempt to abolish it at the time of the passing of the
Judicature Acts met with no success. The true reason of its
very general acceptance is probably this—that it gives effect
to the principle of distributing losses at sea, which is
widely prevalent in maritime affairs. Insurance, limitation of
shipowner's liability, and general average contribution are
all connected, more or less directly, with this principle."

_R. G. Marsden,
Two Points of Admiralty Law,
Law Quarterly Review,
volume 2, pages 357-362._

For an enumeration of the various Maritime codes with their
dates,

See
_Benedict's Am. Admiralty,
pages 91-97,_
and
_Davis' Outlines of International Law,
pages 5, 6, &c._

----------ADMIRALTY LAW: End----------

----------COMMON LAW: Start----------

Common Law. [Including legislation in modification of It.]

COMMON LAW: A. D. 449-1066.
Trial by Jury unknown to Anglo-Saxons.

"It may be confidently asserted that trial by jury was unknown
to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors; and the idea of its existence in
their legal system has arisen from a want of attention to the
radical distinction between the members or judges composing a
court, and a body of men apart from that court, but summoned
to attend it in order to determine conclusively the facts of
the case in dispute. This is the principle on which is founded
the intervention of a jury; and no trace whatever can be found
of such an institution in Anglo-Saxon times."

_W. Forsyth,
Trial by Jury,
page 45._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 630.
The first Written Body of English Law.

"The first written body of English Law is said to have been
promulgated in the Heptarchy by Ethelbert, about the year 630,
and enacted with the consent of the states of his kingdom."

_Joseph Parke,
History of Chancery,
page 14._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 871-1066.
The King's Peace.

1. The technical use of "the king's peace" is, I suspect,
connected with the very ancient rule that a breach of the
peace in a house must be atoned for in proportion to the
householder's rank. If it was in the king's dwelling, the
offender's life was in the king's hand. This peculiar sanctity
of the king's house was gradually extended to all persons who
were about his business, or specially under his protection;
but when the Crown undertook to keep the peace everywhere, the
king's peace became coincident with the general peace of the
kingdom, and his especial protection was deemed to be extended
to all peaceable subjects. In substance, the term marks the
establishment of the conception of public justice, exercised
on behalf of the whole commonwealth, as something apart from
and above the right of private vengeance,—a right which the
party offended might pursue or not, or accept composition for,
as he thought fit. The private blood feud, it is true,
formally and finally disappeared from English jurisprudence
only in the present century; but in its legalized historical
shape of the wager of battle it was not a native English
institution.

_Sir Frederick Pollock,
Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics,
page 205._

See, also, KING'S PEACE.

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1066.
Inquisition, parent of Modern Jury.

"When the Normans came into England they brought with them,
not only a far more vigorous and searching kingly power than
had been known there, but also a certain product of the
exercise of this power by the Frankish kings and the Norman
dukes; namely, the use of the inquisition in public
administration, i. e., the practice of ascertaining facts by
summoning together by public authority a number of people most
likely, as being neighbors, to know and tell the truth, and
calling for their answer under oath. This was the parent of
the modern jury. …
{1957}
With the Normans came also another novelty, the judicial
duel—one of the chief methods for determining controversies
in the royal courts; and it was largely the cost, danger, and
unpopularity of the last of these institutions which fed the
wonderful growth of the other."

_J. B. Thayer,
The Older Modes of Trial
(Harvard Law Review, volume 5, page 45)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1066-1154.
Trial by Jury unknown to Anglo-Normans.

"The same remark which has already been made, with reference
to the absence of all mention of the form of jury trial in the
Anglo-Saxon Laws, applies equally to the first hundred years
after the Conquest. It is incredible that so important a
feature of our jurisprudence, if it had been known, would not
have been alluded to in the various compilations of law which
were made in the reigns of the early Norman kings. …
Although the form of the jury did not then exist, the
rudiments of that mode of trial may be distinctly traced, in
the selection from the neighborhood where the dispute arose,
of a certain number of persons, who after being duly sworn
testified to the truth of the facts within their own
knowledge. This is what distinguishes the proceeding from what
took place among the Anglo-Saxons—namely, the choosing a
limited number of probi homines to represent the community,
and give testimony for them."

_W. Forsyth,
Trial by Jury,
pages 82-90._

See, also, JURY: TRIAL BY.

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1066-1154.
The Curia Regis.

"As a legal tribunal the jurisdiction of the Curia was both
civil and criminal, original and appellate. As a primary court
it heard all causes in which the king's interests were
concerned, as well as all causes between the tenants-in-chief
of the crown, who were too great to submit to the local
tribunals of the shire and the hundred. As an appellate court
it was resorted to in those cases in which the powers of the
local courts had been exhausted or had failed to do justice.
By virtue of special writs, and as a special favor, the king
could at his pleasure call up causes from the local courts to
be heard in his own court according to such new methods as his
advisers might invent. Through the issuance of these special
writs the king became practically the fountain of justice, and
through their agency the new system of royal law, which finds
its source in the person of the king, was brought in to remedy
the defects of the old, unelastic system of customary law
which prevailed in the provincial courts of the people. The
curia followed the person of the king, or the justiciar in the
king's absence."

_Hannis Taylor,
Origin and Growth of the English Constitution,
part 1, pages 245-246._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1066-1215.
Purchasing Writs.

"The course of application to the curia regis was of this
nature. The party suing paid, or undertook to pay, to the king
a fine to have justitiam et rectam in his court: and thereupon
he obtained a writ or precept, by means of which he commenced
his suit; and the justices were authorized to hear and
determine his claim."

_Reeves' (Finlason's) History English Law,
volume 1, page 267._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1077.
Trial by Battle.

"The earliest reference to the battle, I believe, in any
account of a trial in England, is at the end of the case of
Bishop Wulfstan v. Abbot Walter, in 1077. The controversy was
settled, and we read: 'Thereof there are lawful witnesses …
who said and heard this, ready to prove it by oath and
battle.' This is an allusion to a common practice in the
Middle Ages, that of challenging an adversary's witness, or
perhaps to one method of disposing of cases where witnesses
were allowed on opposite sides and contradicted each other.
… Thus, as among nations still, so then in the popular
courts and between contending private parties, the battle was
often the ultima ratio, in cases where their rude and
unrational methods of trial yielded no results. It was mainly
in order to displace this dangerous … mode of proof that the
recognitions—that is to say, the first organized form of the
jury—were introduced. These were regarded as a special boon
to the poor man, who was oppressed in many ways by the duel.
It was by enactment of Henry II. that this reform was brought
about, first in his Norman dominions (in 1150-52), before
reaching the English throne, and afterwards in England,
sometime after he became king, in 1154."

_J. B. Thayer,
The Older Modes of Trial
(Harvard Law Review, volume 5, pages 66-67)._

See, also: WAGER OF BATTLE.

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1100 (circa).
Origin of Statutes of Limitation.

"Our ancestors, instead of fixing a given number of years as
the period within which legal proceedings to recover real
property must be resorted to, had recourse to the singular
expedient of making the period of limitation run from
particular events or dates. From the time of Henry I. to that
of Henry III., on a writ of right, the time within which a
descent must be shown was the time of King Henry I. (Co. Litt.
114b). In the twentieth year of Henry III., by the Statute of
Merton (c. 8) the date was altered to the time of Henry II.
Writs of 'mort d'ancestor' were limited to the time of the
last return of King John into England; writs of novel
disseisin to the time of the king's first crossing the sea
into Gascony. In the previous reign, according to Glanville
(lib. 13, c. 33), the disseisin must have been since the last
voyage of King Henry II. into Normandy. So that the time
necessary to bar a claim varied materially at different
epochs. Thus matters remained until the 3 Edw. I. (Stat. West.
1, c. 39), when, as all lawyers are aware, the time within
which a writ of right might be brought was limited to cases in
which the seisin of the ancestor was since the time of King
Richard I., which was construed to mean the beginning of that
king's reign (2 Inst. 238), a period of not less than
eighty-six years. The legislature having thus adopted the
reign of Richard I. as the date from which the limitation in a
real action was to run, the courts of law adopted it as the
period to which, in all matters of prescription or custom,
legal memory, which till then had been confined to the time to
which living memory could go back, should thenceforth be
required to extend. Thus the law remained for two centuries
and a half, by which time the limitation imposed in respect of
actions to recover real property having long become
inoperative to bar claims which had their origin posterior to
the time of Richard I., and having therefore ceased
practically to afford any protection against antiquated
claims, the legislature, in 32d of Henry VIII. (c. 2), again
interfered, and on this occasion, instead of dating the period
of limitation from some particular event or date, took the
wiser course of prescribing a fixed number of years as the
limit within which a suit should be entertained. …
{1958}
It was of course impossible that as time went on the adoption
of a fixed epoch, as the time from which legal memory was to
run, should not be attended by grievous inconvenience and
hardship. Possession, however long, enjoyment, however
interrupted, afforded no protection against stale and obsolete
claims, or the assertion of long abandoned rights. And as
parliament failed to intervene to amend the law, the judges
set their ingenuity to work, by fictions and presumptions, to
atone for the supineness of the legislature. … They first
laid down the somewhat startling rule that from the usage of a
lifetime the presumption arose that a similar usage had
existed from a remote antiquity. Next, as it could not but
happen that, in the case of many private rights, especially in
that of easements, which had a more recent origin, such a
presumption was impossible, judicial astuteness to support
possession and enjoyment, which the law ought to have invested
with the character of rights, had recourse to the questionable
theory of lost grants. Juries were first told that from user,
during living memory, or even during twenty years, they might
presume a lost grant or deed; next they were recommended to
make such presumption; and lastly, as the final consummation
of judicial legislation, it was held that a jury should be
told, not only that they might, but also that they were bound
to presume the existence of such a lost grant, although
neither judge nor jury, nor anyone else, had the shadow of a
belief that any such instrument had ever really existed. …
When the doctrine of presumptions had proceeded far towards
its development, the legislature at length interfered, and in
respect of real property and of certain specified easements,
fixed certain periods of possession or enjoyment as
establishing presumptive rights."

_C. J. Cockburn,
in Bryant v. Foot,
L. R. 2 Q. B., 161;
s. c. (Thayer's Cases on Evidence, 94)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1110 (circa).
The King's Peace superior to the Peace of the Subject.

"We find in the so-called laws of Henry I, that wherever men
meet for drinking, selling, or like occasions, the peace of
God and of the lord of the house is to be declared between
them. The amount payable to the host is only one shilling, the
king taking twelve, and the injured party, in case of insult,
six. Thus the king is already concerned, and more concerned
than anyone else; but the private right of the householder is
distinctly though not largely acknowledged. We have the same
feeling well marked in our modern law by the adage that every
man's house is his castle, and the rule that forcible entry
may not be made for the execution of ordinary civil process
against the occupier: though for contempt of Court arising in
a civil cause, it may, as not long ago the Sheriff of Kent had
to learn in a sufficiently curious form. The theoretical
stringency of our law of trespass goes back, probably, to the
same origin. And in a quite recent American textbook we read,
on the authority of several modern cases in various States of
the Union, that 'a man assaulted in his dwelling is not
obliged to retreat, but may defend his possession to the last
extremity.'"

_F. Pollock,
The King's Peace
(Law Quarterly Review, volume 1, pages 40-41)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1135.
Abeyance of the King's Peace.

"The King's Peace is proclaimed in general terms at his
accession. But, though generalized in its application, it
still was subject to a strange and inconvenient limit in time.
The fiction that the king is everywhere present, though not
formulated, was tacitly adopted; the protection once confined
to his household was extended to the whole kingdom. The
fiction that the king never dies was yet to come. It was not
the peace of the Crown, an authority having continuous and
perpetual succession, that was proclaimed, but the peace of
William or Henry. When William or Henry died, all authorities
derived from him were determined or suspended; and among other
consequences, his peace died with him. What this abeyance of
the King's Peace practically meant is best told in the words
of the Chronicle, which says upon the death of Henry I. (anno
1135): 'Then there was tribulation soon in the land, for every
man that could forthwith robbed another.' Order was taken in
this matter (as our English fashion is) only when the
inconvenience became flagrant in a particular case. At the
time of Henry III.'s death his son Edward was in Palestine. It
was intolerable that there should be no way of enforcing the
King's Peace till the king had come back to be crowned; and
the great men of the realm, by a wise audacity, took upon them
to issue a proclamation of the peace in the new king's name
forthwith. This good precedent being once made, the doctrine
of the King's Peace being in suspense was never afterwards
heard of."

_F. Pollock,
The King's Peace
(Law Quarterly Review, volume 1, pages 48-49)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1154-1189.
Origin of Unanimity of Jury.

"The origin of the rule as to unanimity may, I think, be
explained as follows: In the assise as instituted in the reign
of Henry II. it was necessary that twelve jurors should agree
in order to determine the question of disseisin; but this
unanimity was not then secured by any process which tended to
make the agreement compulsory. The mode adopted was called,
indeed, an afforcement of the jury; but this term did not
imply that any violence was done to the conscientious opinions
of the minority. It merely meant that a sufficient number were
to be added to the panel until twelve were at last found to
agree in the same conclusion; and this became the verdict of
the assise. … The civil law required two witnesses at least,
and in some cases a greater number, to establish a fact in
dispute; as, for instance, where a debt was secured by a
written instrument, five witnesses were necessary to prove
payment. These would have been called by our ancestors a
jurata of five. At the present day, with us no will is valid
which is not attested by at least two witnesses. In all
countries the policy of the law determines what it will accept
as the minimum of proof. Bearing then in mind that the jury
system was in its inception nothing but the testimony of
witnesses informing the court of facts supposed to lie within
their own knowledge, we see at once that to require that
twelve men should be unanimous was simply to fix the amount of
evidence which the law deemed to be conclusive of a matter in
dispute."

_W. Forsyth,
History of Trial by Jury,
chapter 11, section 1._

{1959}

A. D. 1154-1189.
Reign of Law initiated.

"The reign of Henry II. initiates the rule of law. The
administrative machinery, which had been regulated by routine
under Henry I., is now made a part of the constitution,
enunciated in laws, and perfected by a steady series of
reforms: The mind of Henry II. was that of a lawyer and man of
business. He set to work from the very beginning of the reign
to place order on a permanent basis, and, recurring to the men
and measures of his grandfather, to complete an organization
which should make a return to feudalism impossible."

_W. Stubbs,
Select Charters of English Constitutional History,
page 21._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1164-1176.
Trial by Assize.

"The first mention of the trial by assise in our existing
statutes occurs in the Constitutions of Clarendon, A. D. 1164
[see ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170], where it was provided that if
any dispute arose between a layman and a clerk as to whether a
particular tenement was the property of the Church or belonged
to a lay fief, this was to be determined before the chief
justiciary of the kingdom, by the verdict of twelve lawful
men. … This was followed by the Statute of Northampton, A.
D. 1176, which directs the justices, in case a lord should
refuse to give to the heir the seisin of his deceased
ancestor, 'to cause a recognition to be made by means of
twelve lawful men as to what seisin the deceased had on the
day of his death;' and also orders them to inquire in the same
manner in cases of novel disseisin."

_W. Forsyth,
Trial by Jury,
chapter 6, section 3._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1165 (circa).
Justice bought and sold.

"The king's justice was one great source of his revenue, and
he sold it very dear. Observe that this buying and selling was
not in itself corruption, though it is hard to believe that
corruption did not get mixed up with it. Suitors paid heavily
not to have causes decided in their favour in the king's
court, but to have them heard there at all. The king's justice
was not a matter of right, but of exceptional favour; and this
was especially the case when he undertook, as he sometimes
did, to review and overrule the actual decisions of local
courts, or even reverse, on better information, his own
previous commands. And not only was the king's writ sold, but
it was sold at arbitrary and varying prices, the only
explanation of which appears to be that in every case the
king's officers took as much as they could get. Now we are in
a position to understand that famous clause of the Great
Charter: 'To no man will we sell, nor to none deny or delay,
right or justice.' The Great Charter comes about half a
century after the time of which we have been speaking; so in
that time, you see, the great advance had been made of
regarding the king's justice as a matter not of favour but of
right. And besides this clause there is another which provides
for the regular sending of the king's judges into the
counties. Thus we may date from Magna Carta the regular
administration of a uniform system of law throughout England.
What is more, we may almost say that Magna Carta gave England
a capital. For the king's court had till then no fixed seat;
it would be now at Oxford, now at Westminster, now at
Winchester, sometimes at places which by this time are quite
obscure. But the Charter provided that causes between subject
and subject which had to be tried by the king's judges should
be tried not where the king's court happened to be, but in
some certain place; and so the principal seat of the courts of
justice, and ultimately the political capital of the realm,
became established at Westminster."

_Sir F. Pollock,
Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics,
page 209._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1166.
Assize of Clarendon.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170.

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1176.
Justices in Eyre.

"It has been generally supposed that justices in Eyre
(justitiarii itinerantes) were first established in 1176, by
Henry II., for we find it recorded that in that year, in a
great counsel held at Northampton, the king divided the realm
into six parts, and appointed three traveling justices to go
each circuit, so that the number was eighteen in all. … But
although the formal division of the kingdom into separate
circuits may have been first made by Henry II., yet there is
no doubt that single justiciars were appointed by William I.,
a few years after the Conquest, who visited the different
shires to administer justice in the king's name, and thus
represented the curia regis as distinct from the hundred and
county courts."

_W. Forsyth,
Trial by Jury,
pages 81-82._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1189.
Legal Memory.
Its effect.

"No doubt usage for the last fifty or sixty years would be
some evidence of usage 700 years ago, but if the question is
to be considered as an ordinary question of fact, I certainly
for one would very seldom find a verdict in support of the
right as in fact so ancient. I can hardly believe, for
instance, that the same fees in courts of justice which were
till recently received by the officers as ancient fees
attached to their ancient offices were in fact received 700
years ago; or that the city of London took before the time of
Richard I. the same payments for measuring corn and coals and
oysters that they do now. I have no doubt the city of Bristol
did levy dues in the Avon before the time of legal memory, and
that the mayor, as head of that corporation, got some fees at
that time; but I can hardly bring myself to believe that the
mayor of Bristol at that time received 5s. a year from every
ship above sixty tons burthen which entered the Avon; yet the
claim of the city of Bristol to their ancient mayor's dues, of
which this is one, was established before Lord Tenterden, in
1828. I think the only way in which verdicts in support of
such claims, and there are many such, could have properly been
found, is by supposing that the jury were advised that, in
favor of the long continued user, a presumption arose that it
was legal, on which they ought to find that the user was
immemorial, if that was necessary to legalize it, unless the
contrary was proved; that presumption not being one purely of
fact, and to be acted on only when the jury really entertained
the opinion that in fact the legal origin existed. This was
stated by Parke B., on the first trial of Jenkins v. Harvey, 1
C. M. & R. 894, as being his practice, and what he considered
the correct mode of leaving the question to the jury; and that
was the view of the majority of the judges in the Court of
Exchequer Chamber in Shephard v. Payne, 16 C. B. (N. S.) 132;
33 L. J. (C. P.) 158. This is by no means a modern doctrine;
it is as ancient as the time of Littleton, who, in his
Tenures, § 170, says that all are agreed that usage since the
time of Richard I. is a title; some, he says, have thought it
the only title of prescription, but that others have said
'that there is also another title of prescription that was at
the common law before any statute of limitation of writs, &c.,
and that it was where a custom or usage or other thing hath
been used for time whereof mind of man runneth not to the
contrary.
{1960}
And they have said that this is proved by the pleading where a
man will plead a title of prescription of custom. He shall say
that such a custom hath been used from time whereof the memory
of men runneth not to the contrary, that is as much as to say,
when such a matter is pleaded, that no man then alive hath
heard any proof of the contrary, nor hath no knowledge to the
contrary; and insomuch that such title of prescription was at
the common law, and not put out by any statute, ergo, it
abideth as it was at the common law; and the rather that the
said limitation of a writ of right is of so long time past.
'Ideo quaere de hoc.' It is practically the same thing whether
we say that usage as far back as proof extends is a title,
though it does not go so far back as the year 1189; or that
such usage is to be taken in the absence of proof to the
contrary to establish that the usage began before that year;
and certainly the lapse of 400 years since Littleton wrote has
added force to the remark, 'the rather that the limitation of
a writ of right is of so long time past.' But either way,
proof that the origin of the usage was since that date, puts
an end to the title by prescription; and the question comes
round to be whether the amount of the fee, viz. 13s., is by
itself sufficient proof that it must have originated since."

_J. Blackburn,
in Bryant v. Foot, L. R. 2 Q. B., 161,. s. c.
(Thayer's Cases on Evidence, page 88)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1194.
English Law Repositories.

"The extant English judicial records do not begin until 1194
(Mich. 6 Rich. I.). We have a series of such records from 1384
(6 Rich. II.). The first law treatise by Glanvill was not
written before 1187. The law reports begin in 1292. The
knowledge of the laws of England prior to the twelfth century
is in many points obscure and uncertain. From that time,
however, the growth and development of these laws can be
traced in the parliamentary and official records, treatises,
and law reports."

_John F. Dillon,
The Laws and Jurisprudence of England and America,
pages 28-29._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1199.
Earliest instance of Action for Trespass.

"A case of the year 1199 (2 Rot. Cur. Reg. 34) seems to be the
earliest reported instance of an action of trespass in the
royal courts. Only a few cases are recorded during the next
fifty years. But about 1250 the action came suddenly into
great popularity. In the 'Abbreviatio Placitorum,' twenty-five
cases are given of the single year 1252-1253. We may infer
that the writ, which had before been granted as a special
favor, became at that time a writ of course. In Britton (f.
49), pleaders are advised to sue in trespass rather than by
appeal, in order to avoid 'la perilouse aventure de batayles.'
Trespass in the popular courts of the hundred and county was
doubtless of far greater antiquity than the same action in the
Curia Regis. Several cases of the reign of Henry I, are
collected in Bigelow, Placita Anglo-Normannica, 89, 98, 102,
127."

_J. B. Ames,
The Disseisin of Chattels
(Harvard Law Review, volume 3, page 29, note)._

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1208.
Evidence: Attesting Witnesses.

"From the beginning of our records, we find cases, in a
dispute over the genuineness of a deed, where the jury are
combined with the witnesses to the deed. This goes back to the
Franks; and their custom of requiring the witness to a
document to defend it by battle also crossed the channel, and
is found in Glanville (lib. X., c. 12). … In these cases the
jury and the witnesses named in the deed were summoned
together, and all went out and conferred privately as if
composing one body; the witnesses did not regularly testify in
open court. Cases of this kind are found very early, e. g. in
1208-1209 (Pl. Ab. 63, col. 1, Berk.). … In the earlier
cases these witnesses appear, sometimes, to have been
conceived of as a constituent part of the jury; it was a
combination of business-witnesses and community-witnesses who
tried the case,—the former supplying to the others their
more exact information, just as the hundreders, or those from
another county, did in the cases before noticed. But in time
the jury and the witnesses came to be sharply discriminated.
Two or three cases in the reign of Edward III. show this. In
1337, 1338 and 1349, we are told that they are charged
differently; the charge to the jury is to tell the truth (a
lour ascient) to the best of their knowledge, while that to
the witnesses is to tell the truth and loyally inform the
inquest, without saying anything about their knowledge (sans
lour scient); 'for the witnesses,' says Thorpe, C. J., in
1349, 'should say nothing but what they know as certain, i.
e., what they see and hear.' … By the Statute of York (12
Edw. II. c. 2), in 1318, it was provided that while process
should still issue to the witnesses as before, yet the taking
of the inquest should not be delayed by their absence. In this
shape the matter ran on for a century or two. By 1472 (Y. B.
12 Edw. IV. 4, 9), we find a change. It is said, with the
assent of all the judges, that process for the witnesses will
not issue unless asked for. As late, certainly, as 1489 (Y. B.
5 H. VII. 8), we find witnesses to deeds still summoned with
the jury. I know of no later case. In 1549-1550 Brooke,
afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Bench, argues as if
this practice was still known: 'When the witnesses … are
joined to the inquest,' etc.; and I do not observe anything in
his Abridgment, published in 1568, ten years after his death,
to indicate that it was not a recognized part of the law
during all his time. It may, however, well have been long
obsolescent. Coke (Inst. 6 b.) says of it, early in the
seventeenth century, 'and such process against witnesses is
vanished;' but when or how he does not say. We may reasonably
surmise, if it did not become infrequent as the practice grew,
in the fifteenth century, of calling witnesses to testify to
the jury in open court, that, at any rate, it must have soon
disappeared when that practice came to be attended with the
right, recognized, if not first granted, in the statute of
1562-1563 (5 Eliz. c. 9, s. 6), to have legal process against
all sorts of witnesses."

_James B. Thayer,
in Harvard Law Review,
volume 5, pages 302-5,
also in Sel. Cas. Ev.
pages 771-773._

"After the period reached in the passage above quoted, the old
strictness as to the summoning of attesting witnesses still
continued under the new system. As the history of the matter
was forgotten, new reasons were invented, and the rule was
extended to all sorts of writings."

_J. B. Thayer,
Select Cases on Evidence,
page 773._

{1961}

COMMON LAW: A. D. 1215 (ante).
Courts following the King.