Note 43 — ENGLISH LAW AND THE RENAISSANCE.

The story (with which we are familiar in England) of the evolution of various councils and courts from an ancient Curia Regis seems to have a close parallel in French history: so close that imitation on one side or the other may at times be suspected. After the parlement with its various chambers (which answer to our courts of common law) has been established, the royal council interferes with judicial matters in divers ways, and sections of the council become tribunals which compete with the parlement. (See, e.g. Esmein, Histoire du droit français, ed. 2, pp. 469 ff., and the pedigree of courts and councils in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire générale, vol. IV., p. 143; also the pedigree in N. Valois, Le conseil du roi (1888), p. 11; and Brissaud, Histoire du droit français, pp. 816 ff.) In Germany the doctors of civil law made their way first into councils and then into courts. ‘Die fremdrechtlich geschulten Juristen wurden in Deutschland anfänglich nur in Verwaltungssachen verwendet. Zur Rechtsprechung gelangten sie dadurch, dass die Verwaltung diese an sich zog, und zwar zuerst am Hofe des Königs’ (Brunner, Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 1901, p. 227). In the England of Henry VIII’s day there seems no little danger that die fremdrechtlich geschulten Juristen, of whom there are a good many in the king’s service, will gain the upper hand in the new courts that have emerged from the council, and will proceed from Verwaltung to Rechtsprechung. There came a time when Dr Tunstall (who got his law at Padua) was presiding over the Council of the North and Dr Roland Lee over the Council of the Marches. In 1538 Dr Lee, who was endeavouring to bring Wales to order, said in a letter to Cromwell, ‘If we should do nothing but as the common law will, these things so far out of order will never be redressed’ (Dict. Nat. Biog., vol. XXXII., p. 375).