[Sidenote: _Elbow-room in the courts of law._]
[52] Stow, _Annals_, ed. 1615, p. 631: ‘This yeere (1557) in Michaelmas terme men might have seene in Westminster hall at the Kinges bench barre not two men of law before the iustices; there was but one named Fostar, who looked about and had nothing to doe, the iudges looking about them. In the common place [Court of Common Pleas] no moe sergeants but one, which was sergeant Bouloise [Bendlowes?], who looked about him, there was elbow roome enough, which made the lawyers complaine of their iniuries in that terme.’ In 1536 John Rastell the lawyer and printer of law books complains to Cromwell that in both capacities he is in a bad way: he used to print from two to three hundred reams every year but now prints not a hundred reams in two years; he used to make forty marks a year by the law and now does not make forty shillings (Ellis, _Original Letters_, Ser. III., vol. II., p. 309). On such stories as these little stress is laid; but until the judicial records of the Tudor reigns are statistically examined, scraps of information may be useful.
[Sidenote: _Examination by civilians in criminal cases._]
[53] For an instance see the examination of a servant of the Abbot of Sawley by Drs Layton, Legh and Petre (_Letters and Papers, Henry VIII._, vol. XII., pt. 1, p. 231).
[Sidenote: _The doctors of law and the Peasants’ War._]
[54] As to the evil done to the peasants in Germany by the Reception of Roman law, see Egelhaaf, _Deutsche Geschichte_ (_Zeitalter der Reformation_), vol. I., pp. 544 ff.; Lamprecht, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. V., pp. 99 ff. Dr Brunner (_Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_, 1901, p. 216) has lately said that Roman jurisprudence ‘auch wenn sie nicht geradezu bauernfeindlich war, doch kein Verständnis besass für die Mannigfaltigkeit der bäuerlichen Besitzformen des deutschen Rechtes.’ One of the revolutionary programmes proposed an exclusion of all doctors of civil or canon law from the courts and councils of the princes. See Egelhaaf, _op. cit._, pp. 499, 598. The following is a pretty little tale:--‘So geschah es wirklich einmal zu Frauenfeld im Thurgau, wo die Schöffen einen Doctor aus Constanz, der sich für die Entscheidung eines Erbschaftsstreites auf Bartolus und Baldus berufen wollte, zur Thüre hinauswarfen mit den Worten: “Hört ihr, Doctor, wir Eidgenossen fragen nicht nach dem Bartele und Baldele. Wir haben sonderbare Landbräuche und Rechte. Naus mit euch, Doctor, naus mit euch!” Und habe, heisst es in dem Berichte weiter, der gute Doctor müssen abtreten, und sie Amtleute haben sich einer Urtel verglichen, den Doctor wieder eingefordert und ein Urtel geben wider den Bartele und Baldele und wider den Doctor von Constanz.’ (Janssen, _Geschichte des deutschen Volkes_, vol. I., p. 490.) It is a serious question what would have become of our English copyholders if in the sixteenth century Roman law had been received. The practical jurisprudence of this age seems to have been kinder to the French than to the German peasant; perhaps because it was less Roman in France than in Germany. See E. Levasseur in Lavisse et Rambaud, _Histoire générale_, vol. IV., p. 188: ‘Des jurisconsultes commencèrent à considérer l’inféodation comme une aliénation et le colon censitaire comme le véritable propriétaire de la terre sur laquelle le seigneur n’aurait possédé qu’un droit _éminent_.’ The true Romanist, I take it, can know but one _dominium_, and is likely to give that one to the lord.
