NEW LAW BOOKS.
A TRANSLATION OF GLANVILLE. Ey/o/in Béâmes, Esc., of Lincoln's Inn. With an Introduction by Joseph Henry Beale,Jr., Professor of Law in Harvard University. John Byrne & Co., Washington, 1900. Law sheep, $3.00. (xxxix. + 306 PP-) The beginning of the reign of Richard the Lion hearted — 1189 — is the moment beyond which legal memory does not run. Yet from beyond that point — a few days, it may be, or possibly two years — comes the book entitled "Glanville de Legibus Angliœ," the earliest classic of the English law. To-day this old book comes for the first time from an American press, being, very appropriately, the earliest volume of a Legal Classic Series which has been planned by an enterprising publisher in reliance upon the scholarly tastes that now and then are found in even the most worldly lawyers, — for, after all, ours is a learned profession. Thus it is now easy for the lawyer to place upon his shelves, next to the latest volume of the Century Digest or of the statutes, if he likes, the work that must forever stand at the head of the long procession of English and American law books. Glanville has profited, and must always profit, by the interest that attaches to the earliest ex ample of any sort of achievement. Yet he has better claims than that he is an antique curiosity. He does not give the law of to-day, to be sure; but he does give, accurately and clearly, the law of an age as to which any intelligent man may well enjoy knowing something. One is tempted to say that Glanville comes from the very time when England first began to have law. Possibly such a statement would be extravagant; but certain it is — and this is enough for the present purpose — that in the reign of Henry II, for the first time in history, there was a well-defined system of protectingan Englishman's life and pro perty by courts administering one rule throughout the whole kingdom, and following a definite procedure of a reasonable sort — though side by side with the primitive jury, then introduced, survived trial by ordeal and by battle, to the detriment of justice, but to the benefit of the picturesqueness of the scene, — and that from this famous reign comes the venerable book that has borne through all these years the name of Henry II's last Chief Justiciar, Ranulph cle Glanville.
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A learned investigator is said to have discov ered that the Iliad was composed not by Homer, but by another person of the same name. A similar suggestion has been made as to Glan ville, but Professor Beale sees no reason for ac cepting it, and, accordingly, the lawyers of this day may safely call this book Glanville, after the fashion of their predecessors for seven cen turies. It is interesting to notice that Glan ville's public life began in the very year — 1164 — when the Constitutions of Clarendon brought to a termination the king's contest with Thomas à Becket as to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and made it certain that England would forever be ruled by the common law. It was a fateful year; for, although one cannot predict exactly what would have happened if à Becket had had his way, one can say with certainty that his triumph would have meant that to this day England and America would have in their legal systems, either through the canon law or directly from the civil law, a much greater in fusion of the law of Rome, and that, by forcing the quarrel to an issue, à Becket, somewhat like King John, has become one of the unwilling benefactors of our profession. In the very year of à Becket's fall, as has been said, — although à Becket had still six years to live, — Glanville became one of the king's officials, charged with the duty of executing some of the new reforms. He first was sheriff of Yorkshire, and later he was transferred to other counties. The duties of a sheriff were both judicial and administra tive, and in the case of Glanville by strange chance they happened to include the leading of a victorious posse comitatus against the invading King of Scots. In 1176, two years after his capture of this king, Glanville was made a judge of the Curia Regis; and in 1180 he was made Chief Justiciar. As the duties of the Chief Justiciar were not purely judicial, but .in effect made this great official the viceroy of England, it is not strange that to the exploit against the Scottish king, Glanville added two expeditions against the Welsh. Besides, he was at least three times an ambassador. Of all his feats, the one most clearly entitled to be called extrajudicial was the preaching of a crusade. It is only just to add that Glanville practiced what he preached, on the accession of Richard the Lionhearted preceded the king to the Holy
