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Trial by Battle.-In addition to the case in Reynard the Fox (above) in which was enacted the dramatic scene which we did not finally lose sight of in England till 1819,* both Icelandic and French literature supply further instances. Thor's wager of battle with Rungai was versified by Thiodwolf, though it is only fair to say that the wager is not prominent, as it is in Snorri's prose version.† In Huon de Meri's Tournoyement de l'Antechrist, the virtues under Christ engage and defeat the vices under Antichrist. This is only one out of many examples of the idea of the judicium Dei in medieval romances, both prose and verse. The idea may be derived partly from the tournament, partly from the judicial combat.‡

Citation. The familiar lines of Shakespeare's sonnet, "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

.

I summon up remembrance of things past,"

suggest the consideration of poems in the form of citation or summons. The troubadour poetry, full of legal phrases as it was,§ had more than one attempt of this kind. A citation

* I B. & A. 405; 59 Geo. III., c. 46.

+ Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ii., 16. The ordeal also occurs in Icelandic verse in the vigorous description of the ordeal of Gudona, id., i., 322.

For the importance of the idea in the De Monarchia of Dante see the February number of this Magazine.

§ As in Peire Rogier:

Mon Tort n'avetz prec, s'a leis platz,

Qu'aprenda lo vers si es bos,

E si vol que sia trames

Mon Droit n'a-leis lai ou ill es ;

Deus sal e guart lo cors de leis.

Bartsch, 82.

In modern French law it is thought necessary to give the president of the Court in a criminal trial power qu'il peut interdire à un accusé de présenter sa défense en vers, Hélie, Pratique Criminelle, i., 421. Such a rule of law is hardly necessary in England. The writer, however, well remembers prisoner at assizes handing to the Court a written defence concluding with the pathetic lines:

I didn't go for to do it,
But I'm here through it.

a

of the Consistory of the Gay Science at Toulouse is contained in Las Joyas del Gay Saber.* It is by an anonymous writer, and runs thus in bald prose: "To all experts in the art of rhetoric, commonly called Gay Saber, who are wont to collect the first day of May at the present city to practice nobility and give lovely flowers, we, Chancellor, have set commandments; we make known that next Sunday we shall give as is meet a branch of silver for the pear of pain. And it is also our will to remind you to make compositions new and well divided, complete in three stanzas only of nine lines each, so that your good sense may be notable in the verses, for by knowledge ye will come to great honour. And above all forget not that this refrain fail not at the end; To the heart doth strike me the pear of pain."

JAMES WILLIAMS.

IN

IV. SOME THIRTEENTH CENTURY

STATUTES.

II.

Na recent number of the Law Magazine I referred to the history of the Provisions of Merton, a subject which I propose to consider further in the present article. But before speaking of the Provisions, I shall add a few remarks to those, which I there made, on the Assisa Panis. The instrument printed in the Statutes of the Realm does not differ in substance from those found in Bracton's Note Books and the Annals of Burton; and it is probable that

* P. 235.

+ Hun branc d'argent am la pera d'enguoys.

At the time of writing my last article I was not aware that Dr. Gross had published the Statutum de Judæis exiundis in his Exchequer of the Jews. His text, however, is not taken from the Memoranda Rolls.

§ Vol. iii., p. 302.

|| Ann. Mon. (Chron. and Mem.), Vol. i., p. 375.

it was framed in the year 1256 as stated by the Annalist. But it certainly is not the earliest form of the Assisa Panis. Long before the year 1256, we find upon the Plea Rolls cases which relate to the assize of bread; and they shew not only that it was observed throughout the Kingdom, but that a right of enforcing its provisions was a franchise frequently vested in lords of manors and hundreds, and one the possession of which was much coveted.

It seems from a codex at the British Museum that the price of corn was regulated by an ordinance, in which, however, no precise date occurs, made in the reign of Henry II. This ordinance contains a fully worked out scale made by the King's Bakers. It has been printed by Dr. Cunningham in an Appendix to the first volume of his Growth of English Industry and Commerce. Dr. Cunningham shews that its terms differ considerably from the Assisa Panis, of the Statutes of the Realm. The scale runs in the codex from a high price and a small weight to a low price and a large weight; while in the Statutes it runs in a contrary sense. This is merely a difference in form; there are also differences in substance. The range of prices extends in the codex from eighteenpence to six shillings a quarter; but in the Statutes it extends from two shillings to twenty shillings a quarter. The gradation of the scale is also different in the two instruments; and there is a larger allowance given to the baker's servants in the assize of the year 1256 than in that of Henry II.

In the following reign another assize of bread was framed. It is written in the Red Book of the Exchequer* and begins :

Haec est assisa facta coram Huberto Walteri Cantuarensi Archiepiscopo et coram Episcopis et omnibus Anglis apud Cantuariam per Regem Ricardum.

* Red Book of the Exchequer (Chron. and Mem.), ii., 750.

There is also a codex* in the British Museum, from which we learn that the price of corn was regulated once again in the reign of John. But in this case its introductory words leave us in no doubt as to its date. They are as follows:

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Anno graciae MCCIJ Rex Iohannes fecit generaliter acclamari per totum regnum Angliae vt assisa panis inuiolabiter sub pena collistrigialit obseruaretur; quae probata fuit per pistorem G. filii Petri Iusticiarii Angliae et pistorem R. de Tonay ita quod. Roger de Toenay was evidently one of King John's counsellors, as his name is frequently found among those of witnesses to royal charters about this time; but it is uncertain what office, if any, he held in the administration. Its actual terms are much the same as those of the earlier ordinances, but they are rather more detailed.

The same codex contains a chronicle of the kings of England ending at the forty-second year of Henry III.; and it would seem from this that the ordinance of John remained in force till the time of the substitution of the new scale of prices given in the Annals of Burton.

Fleta and Britton, both of which were written in the reign of Edward I., contain versions of the Assisa Panis, similar to that in the Statutes of the Realm.

It may be objected that an investigation into matters such as the Assize of Bread belongs rather to economics than legal history. But any information as to the nature and objects of early legislation materially concerns the latter subject; while the form and style of every early ordinance deserve careful attention. But beyond this any fact which may assist in determining the date of a manuscript comprising statutes and legal treatises is of importance. If we can be sure of the date of an article in one part of a

*

Julius D., vij.

+ Pillory.

codex, we may possibly draw some inference as to the date of an article in another part. For instance, the codex in which the Assisa Panis of John occurs, also contains a transcript of the Provisions of Merton. The fact that this ordinance was replaced in the year 1256, or thereabouts, by another, and the fact that the chronicle which precedes it stops at about the same year are evidence of the time when the codex itself was written. It may indeed reasonably be inferred, that we have here a copy of the Provisions of Merton in the form, in which they were known to lawyers some five and twenty years after they were enacted.

Inasmuch as this transcript of the Provisions comprises the six clauses only, which were contained in the writs sent to the sheriffs, ordering them to proclaim the new laws, we have further evidence that these laws comprised no other clauses.

Let us now consider the clauses included in the Provisions of the Statutes of the Realm, but not included in the writs sent to the sheriffs. Of all of them the one which refers to the unlawful marriage of heirs under fourteen is the most embarrassing. There are no references to it on any of the Chancery rolls for the year in which the Provisions were made nor on those of the next preceding or succeeding years. On the other hand, forty years later it was officially considered to be an integral part of them; for we read in the Statutes of Westminster the First,

Des heyrs mariez dedenz age saunz le gre de lur gardeins auant le age de quatorze aunz seit fet solum ceo quil est contenu en la Proveaunce de Merton.

Any satisfactory explanation of the absence of this Provision from the writs to the sheriffs, and from the early transcripts, ought to explain how it subsequently became inserted in the later transcripts, and became officially

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