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Charles Pelham Villiers.
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power of the officer created pro hâc vice to preside in the House of Lords at State Trials grew out of those of the Chief Justiciary. If that view were correct, the functionary so appointed would have been styled "high justiciary," whereas he is styled "lord high steward"—that is, senescallus Angliæ, and he exercises powers which had been delegated to the high justiciary from the senescallus Angliæ, to whom they were restored pro hâc vice in the person of the lord high steward.[1]
For some twenty years this King had governed Scotland with a rule as absolute and much more
- ↑ Professor Stubbs is, as far as I know, the only writer, legal or historical, who has come to the same conclusion which I have come to as to the origin of the English Justiciarship. In the first volume of his Constitutional History (Stubbs), p. 346, he says:—"It would seem most probable that William Fitz-Osberne at least was left in his character of steward, and that the Norman seneschalship was thus the origin of the English justiciarship." Professor Stubbs's first volume was published in 1874. In July, 1838, I published in The British and Foreign Review an article which John Kemble, the editor of that Review, whom both Professor Stubbs and Mr. E. A. Freeman cite as an authority in English history, said had a historical value. That article gave an explanation of the functions of the seneschal or dapifer and their relation to those of the Chief Justiciary.
