19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 645 what he was doing when the Barons' War was raging, but it is probable that he was quietly attending to his judicial duties. In Bracton's book we find that the rules of law are fixed and settled. They bind even the king. The sympathies of Bracton with the party of freedom and progress here and there appear. " While the king does justice," says Bracton,
- ' he is the vicegerent of the Eternal King, but when he
dechnes to injustice, he is the minister of the devil." He had a noble ideal of the office of the lawyer and the judge. Using the phrase of the Digest he says of his profession, namque justitiam colimus et sacra jura mmistramus, " We are the ministers at the altar of justice and feed its sacred flame." ^ The greatness of Bracton's work is best proven by the reflection that five centuries were to pass away before another English lawyer, in the person of Blackstone, was to appear, competent to write a treatise upon the whole subject of English law. Fortescue's De Laudibus is a panegyric, Lit- tleton's Tenures covers a small field, Coke's Institutes are so poorly arranged and badly written as to be unfit to rank with the clear, precise, and flowing language of Bracton or of Blackstone. The long period from the Conquest in 1066 to Bracton's death in 1267 had been a period of marvelous growth. It began with a varied assortment of local courts lacking set- tled rules, and ends with a highly organized system of courts administering a settled and rational system of law. It begins with a barbarous procedure, and ends with a rationalized method of ascertaining the facts. In the criminal law it begins with a system where the criminal makes redress to the injured party or his kin, it ends in a direct punishment of crime for the benefit of the whole society. Succeeding ages have merely amplified and glossed the distinctive rules of Bracton. The common law by its very form was made capa- ble of indefinite expansion. In addition, the general progression of the justices, hold-
- The above free translation is more than a reminiscence of Cole-
ridge's lines.
