628 V. BENCH AND BAR a bronze or plastic age, by fictions, bent old remedies to suit new conditions. Later, an iron age, harsh and rigid, owing to the jury system, left a large part of juris- prudence to the courts of chancery. The golden age ends with the death of Bracton ; the silver age is that of the three Edwards ; the bronze age covers the Lancastrian and Yorkist kings to the death of Littleton ; the iron age ends with the Revolution of 1688. Then a period of im- provement and reform, slowly feeling its way by statutes of jeofails to the great reforms of our century, began; the end of that great effort is now almost attained, and perhaps the golden age is about to return.^ I. The Golden Age of the Common Law: From the Norman Conquest to the Death of Bracton ^ The period of the Norman kings is one of gradual growth. ^The Norman lawyers, building upon what they found, made no violent changes. The Conqueror, under the wise guidance of Lanf ranc, made no attempt to change existing laws and customs. Beyond taking ecclesiastical matters out of the jurisdiction of the county court, and protecting his Norman followers by special laws and tribunals, his reign was occu- pied in establishing the king as the ultimate owner of the conquered land and in the division of the spoil. But even in that troubled time, one capable man rose to eminence as a lawyer. The Italian Lanf ranc. Archbishop of Canterbury, learned in the civil law, by his study of Anglo-Saxon laws prevailed in the one great lawsuit of this reign. The Domes- ' [A Table of Regnal Years is prefixed to this volume. — Eds.]
- The authorities for this period, beside the well-known works of
Pollock and Maitland, Foss, Lord Campbell, Stubbs, Hallam and the other historians, include Bigelow's Placita Anglo-Normannica, Freeman's William Rufus, Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Dugdale's Baronage, Maitland's Domesday, Pollock's King's Justice (12 Harv. L. Rev.), Pollock's King's Peace (13 Harv. L. Rev.), Foss' Memories of Westminster Hall, Hall's Court Life Under the Plantagenets, Mrs. Green's Henry H., PuUing's Order of the Coif, Scale's Introduction to his edition of Glanville, Maitland's Register of Writs (3 Harv. L. Rev.), Maitland's Introduction to Bracton's Note Book, Maitland's Brac- ton and Azo, Select Pleas of the Crown (Selden Society), Select Civil Pleas (Selden Society), and numerous sources of general history, such as William of Malmesbury, Matthew Paris, etc.
