condemned to be hanged, but on a false tale of a treasure Nobel the King, at the Queen's request, pardons him on condition of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.* On further complaints against Reinaert (who had not fulfilled the condition),† the King is wroth, but the Queen again intervenes, saying, Audi alteram partem.‡ Reinaert is cited and produces the opinion of Mertijn the ape (who had been advocate to the Bishop of Cameryk), that the Archdeacon who had put Reinaert under the censure of the Church should be cited and put to his defence, and that the censure should be remitted under pain of papal interdict. The King being against Reinaert on this point, Firapeel the leopard urges that the King cannot go beyond the verdict of his men. Finally, Isegrim challenges Reinaert, who takes up the glove. The King fixed a day and field, and took pledges of the combatants. Reinaert wins by unfair means, and the King makes him of his Council and one of his Justices. German.-Examples do not seem to be frequent. Heinrich von Meissen, known as Frauenlob, had about 1300 a poetical contest with Barthel Regenbogen as to whether frau or weib were the more honourable title of * Instances of the imposition of such a condition appear in French records, possibly not in English. † Conditional pardon is not complete until the condition be fulfilled. For a statutory instance of conditional pardon, see 16 & 17 Vict., c. 99. For conditional pardon of an approver under the older law, see Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law, i., 250. This maxim does not appear in so many words in Roman law texts, but it has often been assumed by the Courts in all countries as an elementary principle of justice. The nearest approach to it in Roman Law is, perhaps, Ea quæ altera parte absente decernuntur vim rerum judicatarum non obtinent (Paulus, Sent., V., 5A, 6). § "Borowes" in Caxton's translation. The term lawburrows is still used in Scotland; the word also occurs in the headborough of the tithing in old law (capitalis plegius), the other nine being handboroughs. They were sureties for the due appearance of the accused. women. Meissen supported the former-even against the high authority of a previous decision of Walther von der Vogelweide—whence the name by which he is usually known.* In the sixteenth century Johann Fischart expanded the Procès des Femmes et des Pulces—already mentioned-into a poem of 4,315 verses, and made the judicial authority different. In the French poem the judge was a minorite friar, in the German it was the Chancelier des Puces.t English. There seems to be no contentio in early English poetry, but in the middle English period examples are fairly frequent. One of the earliest is the Hule and the Nightingale, probably written in the reign of Edward I.‡ A dispute arising between the owl and the nightingale, both parties agree to refer the question as to which was the better singer to Maister Nichole of Guldeford. The poem ends by both going to look for the arbitrator, but as to the decision the writer gives no information. The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman is full of law. It was written at a time when reform was in the air, and probably both the land law and the procedure were inexhaustible topics of conversation, and not merely confined to lawyers. The period from 1361 to the last years of Richard II. is marked by statutory changes of the law of the highest importance. Purveyance, labourers, escheators, mortmain, prohibition, maintenance, papal provisions, were matters of substantive law falling under the notice of Parliament; and as to adjective law, every year of the period saw amendments, or attempted amendments, of the practice of the Courts in the matters of pleading, arrest, venue, mainpernors, and many others. others. As to the procedure part of the poem, in Passus iii., iv. and v., Theology objects to the *The contest is described in Scherer, Hist. of German Lit., i., 210 (translation by Mrs. Conybeare). ↑ Flöh Hatz, Weiher Tratz (1573). Courthope, Hist. of Eng. Poetry, i., 136. marriage of Falsehood and Lady Mede (Bribery), on the ground of her pre-contract to Truth. Meed is arrested by beadles and bailiffs and brought before the King's Court at Westminster. The King summons Reason as an assessor. He advises the King to do justice, and Meed has to become mainpernor for future good behaviour.t In Chaucer the Court of Love and the Cuckoo and the Nightingale have something of a legal aspect, but in the Assembly of Fowles the actual procedure of the King's Court seems to be the principle on which the poem is framed. The plot, probably derived from a French fabliau, is as follows:-The poet dreams that he comes on St. Valentine's Day into a garden where sits the Goddess of Nature, and to her presence came all fowls "to take her doom." A formel eagle is set for a prize as mate to the most worthy fowl. Three tercel eagles state their pretensions. Certain birds give what may be called a verdict. Nature calls on the formel eagle for judgment. She says Curia advisari vult, and asks for a year to prepare judgment, which is conceded. Dunbar's Golden. Targe deals with the Courts of Venus and of Cupid, but there seems to be a confusion-intentional or not-between the two meanings of the word Court, just as in curia regis. * At that time pre-contract was an impediment to marriage. The disability of pre-contract was abolished by 32 Hen. VIII., c. 38, then revived and reenacted, finally abolished by Lord Hardwicke's Act, 26 Geo. II., c. 33, s. 13, re-enacted by 4 Geo. IV., c. 76, s. 27. Not only was it an impediment to marriage, but either party to the pre-contract might, until Lord Hardwicke's Act, sue in the Court Christian for specific performance of the contract. See Baxter v. Buckley, 1 Lee 42. This is perhaps not very correct law. The mainpernor seems to have been a person other than the accused. “The writ de manucaptione (of mainprise) was appropriated to cases in which a person had been taken on suspicion of felony and had tendered manucaptors or mainpernors who had been refused" (Stephen, Hist. of the Crim. Law, i., 240). Further, Meed does not seem to have been in contempt, and the fact of an alleged pre-contract was scarcely ground for arrest. But Langland was not writing a work on procedure. Gavin Douglas' Palace of Honour is more distinctly legal. The poet is put on his trial before the Court of Venus for writing a libellous ballad against the goddess. He pleads to the jurisdiction, not the very good plea that the goddess was judge in her own cause, but (1) that ladies may not be judges; (2) that the writer, as a spiritual man, is not amenable to a lay court, but ought "to be remit to my judge ordinair.” He is granted a conditional pardon, the condition being the writing of a ballad in praise of love. The rest of the poem is a fulfilment of the condition. In the Elizabethan period several instances occur. Among others may be mentioned His Heart arraigned of Theft and acquitted,* and Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 52. The type of poem continues as a living thing through the centuries. It passes down through Cowper's Report of an adjudged Caset to the present year, in which the following verses by the writer appeared in a periodical. They are not claimed to be particularly good as verse, but they are an illustration of the type. WINTER AND SPRING. With ice and snow his hoary haired assessors "Fair flowers, ye smile, blithe birds, ye sing together, In high contempt of me. "Wherefore my sentence is that ye be taken, Birds, flowers, and streams, and each be made my thrall, And I be lord of all." *Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, (ed. by Bullen, 1891), i., 37. The poem is by A. W. + The well-known "Between nose and eyes a strange contest arose." The flowers appeal, and ready for revision Sits Spring in Council, June is there and May, Then gravely Spring doth say: "This Court whereof I am presiding member A few cases of poems dealing with procedure not in the tenso form are worth a short notice. In them all the poet is more or less under the influence of legal ideas, and in the first case, that of the will, there is almost as long and complete a continuity as in the tenso. Wills. At what time or in what language the poetic will began cannot be said, but examples occur certainly as early as the fifteenth century in the famous Grand and Petit Testaments of Villon. In the Cancionero of Hernando de Castillo already mentioned there are two, El Testamento de Amores* and a similar one supposed to have been made by a Portuguese.† Among later romances in imitation of the older Romancero poems the testament of Don Quixote became a commonplace, and appears in several forms. Sanchez de Badajoz went rather farther, and wrote his own will in poetry, beginning in proper form and proceeding at great length in nine leciones or lessons.‡ Numerous French verse wills occur in the Bibliothèque Elzevirienne, already mentioned. In England there is Gascoigne's Last Will and Testament, and there have been many real wills which the eccentricity of testators has led them to clothe in rhyme. Many of them will be found in books dealing with the curiosities of law. * Edition of 1882, No. 154. + Id., No. 207. Pues que yo en tiempo tan fuerte Voluntad. |