Note 1 — INTRODUCTION. The Plantagenets.
Reading edition
"Edward the First hath justly been styled the English Justinian. For, in his time, the law did receive so sudden a perfection, that Sir Matthew Hale does not scruple to affirm that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom than in all the ages since that time put together.... It was from this period that the liberty of England began to rear its head."—Blackstone's Commentaries.