Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/94

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82
Notes 51, 52

[author of Doctor and Student] and such other heresies of Anibaptist.' As I understand the protest against injunctions, it means that the chancery may interfere with an action at common law, only if that action is opening a question already decided in the chancery. It will be seen that in 1536 the cause of 'the common laws' finds itself in very queer company: illiterate, monkish and papistical company, which apparently has made a man of 'Anibaptist.' (For this important manifesto, see Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. XI., pp. 506—507.)

Elbow-room in the courts of law.62  Stow, Annals, ed. 1615, p. 631: 'This yeere (1557) in Michaelmas terme men might have scene in Westminster hall at the Kinges bench barre not two men of law before the iustices; there was but one named Fostar, who looked about and had nothing to doe, the iudges looking about them. In the common place [Court of Common Pleas] no moe sergeants but one, which was sergeant Bouloise [Bendlowes?], who looked about him, there was elbow roome enough, which made the lawyers complaine of their iniuries in that terme.' In 1536 John Rastell the lawyer and printer of law books complains to Cromwell that in both capacities he is in a bad way: he used to print from two to three hundred reams every year but now prints not a hundred reams in two years; he used to make forty marks a year by the law and now does not make forty shillings (Ellis, Original Letters, Ser.