228 The Period of Constitution Making
said that, at that time, the common law was sufficiently
inoculated with the Roman law to make it unlikely to fall
under the latter's coinpleter sway at a later period.1 In
the last half of the thirteenth century, there was a radical
change of attitude in the guardians of the law. Law was
no longer in the hands of ecclesiastics; a class of profes-
sional lawyers was forming. As the common law became
more fixed and circumscribed,2 any attempt to modify or
enlarge it, especially from what was doubtless regarded
as a rival system, was looked upon with disfavour.
The two great treatises of Glanville and Bracton, the
one coming at the beginning and the other at the end of
the common law's creative century, were most important
in England's legal history. Late in Henry II.'s reign was
written a Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England,
ascribed to Ranulf Glanville and always passing under his
name.3 The impulse to write such a treatise, a very re-
markable performance for the time, probably came from
the revived interest in Roman law characteristic of the
twelfth century. But there is little Roman law in the
work, and the author shows no desire to adopt it; it is
not Roman even in the matter of arrangement. The law
of the king's court is the subject, little or no attention
being paid to the law administered in other courts; and
there is more about procedure than about substantive
law. Though the Treatise was unofficial, it had a great
influence upon the law and procedure with which it dealt.
It was an able attempt to formulate and arrange a very
vague and elusive material, and put into durable condi-
tion many valuable things that might otherwise have been
lost. Its coming at the end of Henry II.'s reign was ex-
tremely opportune.
Equally timely was the greater work of Bracton, Con-
1 See the citation from Brttnner in Maitland, English Law and the Ren-
mssancs, note 55.
* See above, pp. 214, 215.
* It was perhaps written by Glanville's nephew, Hubert Walter; but
the authorship will probably never be known with certainty. See Malt-
land's article on Glanville in the Dictionary of National Biography.