Note 843 — MAGNA CARTA. (continued 5)

Pollock and Maitland, I. 393, hesitate to condemn this argument. "The very title of the ‘barons’ of the Exchequer forbids us to treat this as mere insolence." Dr. Stubbs has no such scruples: “The Bishop replied contemptuously, and with a perverse misrepresentation of the English law” (Const. Hist., II. 49). Elsewhere he makes him, not so much contemptuous, as ill-informed of the law—“ignorant blunder as it was” (II. 191). Yet Bishop Peter had presumably a more intimate knowledge of the law he administered as justiciar in 1233 than any modern writer can have. In the matter of amercements, at least, the barons of the exchequer acted as the peers of earls and barons.