686 V. BENCH AND BAR one of God*s appropriate blessings upon just men. It is a fulfillment of the Prophet's word that the generation of the righteous is blessed, that their children shall be blessed, and that their seed shall endure forever. Perhaps Fortescue, after the fatal field of Tewkesbury, when he lay a prisoner in the Tower, found consolation in the promise of the Psalm- ist : " The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord ; though he fall, yet shall he not be utterly cast down, for the Lord sustaineth him with his hand." For once at least the promise came true. Fortescue lived his last years in peace and honor. He saw the bloody tyrant, Richard of Gloucester, on Bosworth field, pay the penalty of his many crimes, and when the great Chief Justice passed away, a Lancastrian king was in undisturbed possession of the throne. IV. The Iron Age of the Common Law: From Henry VII. to the Revolution of 1688 ^ The Yorkist kings had betrayed a tendency to use the courts for the furtherance of tyrannical ends ; but Henry VII., who had been trained in the Lancastrian tradition of the independence of the judiciary, made absolutely no change in the judges after his victory at Bosworth. The avarice of this king was, however, so great that we have an instance of a melancholy practice which became common under the V Stuarts. The king sold to Robert Read, a very good law-
- General references for this period : Foss and Campbell now become
much fuller in detail. The State Trials are invaluable for the whole period. Besides these may be named: Fitzherbert's Abridgement, New Natura Brevium and Diversity of Courts, Lynwoode's Provinciale, St. Germain's Doctor and Student, Select Cases from the Court of Requests (Selden Society), Select Cases from the Star Chamber (Selden Society), Reeves' History of English Law, Spedding's Life of Bacon, Anderson's, Dyer's, Popham's and Plowden's Reports, Pollock's I^and Laws, Dug- dale's Origines, Staunforde's Pleas of the Crown, Coke upon Littleton, Coke's Institutes, Coke's Reports with the Introductions, Whitelocke's Memorials, Hale's Introduction to Rolle's Abridgement (in Hargrave's Collecteana Juridica), Saunders' Reports, North's Life of Lord Keeper North, Irving's Life of Jeffreys, Roscoe's Lives of Eminent Lawyers. Hale's Pleas of the Crown and History of the Common Law are not critical. For the historical development of the rules of evidence consult Wigmore on Evidence under the particular rule.
