The English Law Courts.
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settlement of the leading doctrine of equity, In regard to Nottingham's character, abil ities and judicial work there can be but one in regard to trusts, and the enactment of the opinion. In private life he was a model of statute of Frauds, directed against the en all the virtues. The foul and venomous forcement of verbal contracts, the validity of tongue of Restoration society could lay verbal conveyances of interests in land, the nothing to his charge. He was the patron creation of trusts of land without writing, and of literature and learning. In the words of the allowance of nuncupative wills. " In modern times, says Mr. Kerly, in the able Blackstone he was " endued with a pervad ing genius that enabled him to discover and work already referred to, " this statute has not infrequently been pursue the true spirit decried, especially so of justice notwith standing the embar far as it restricts the verbal proof of con rassments raised by tracts, but in estimat the narrow and tech nical notions which ing its value and operation at the time then prevailed in the it became law, it courts of law, and the must be remembered imperfect ideas of that the evidence of redress which had the parties to an ac possessed the courts of equity. The reas tion at law could not then be received, and on and necessities of the defendant might mankind arising from have been charged the great change in on the uncorroborat property, by the ex ed statement of a tension of trade and single witness, which the abolition of mili tary tenures, co-oper he was not then al lowed to contradict, ated in establishing his plan, and enabled as Lord Eldon argued him in the course of many years after wards, when the ac nine years to build a system of jurispru tion upon the case for LORD LLUON. fraud was introduced dence and jurisdic at law. It was there tion upon wide and rational foundations." North, the eulogist fore a most reasonable precaution while this unreasonable rule continued to lay down of his successor Guilford, described Notting ham as a formalist and a hairsplittcr. But the rule that the defendant should be a perusal of his decisions will satisfy anyone charged only upon writing, signed by him." that this charge is unfounded 1 and that he always endeavored to decide cases on prin ciples which — to use his own words — EARL OF HARDWICKE. "might stand with the reason of mankind Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, was the when debated abroad." We owe to him the son of a lawyer, who filled the office of Town 1 See an excellent account of Nottingham in D. M. Kerly's History of Equity, a work which well deserves to Clerk of Dover, and was born in 1690. He was educated at a school at Bethnal Green, have a transatlantic reputation.
