Law Courts 257
A final straggle between king and people would probably
have come In the seventeenth century even if the old law
had been replaced by the Roman, "but it would hardly
have been that struggle for the medieval, the Lancastrian,
constitution in which Coke and Selden and Prynne and
other ardent searchers of mouldering records won their
right to be known to schoolboys/11 and one can hardly
feel much hope for the people in such hypothetical con-
flict, the Stuart kings having the Roman law for their ally*
But to say nothing of the political side of the matter, of the
absolute monarchy which the Roman law lias been apt to
bring in its train, it is probably well for us and for the world
at large that we have stumbled forward in our empirical
fashion, blundering into wisdom. The moral glow known to
the virtuous school-boy who has not used the "crib" that
was ready to his hand, we may allow ourselves to feel; and
we may hope for the blessing which awaits all those who
have taught themselves anything.2
In conclusion, a word needs to be said about the equity
of the Court of Chancery and about statute law. Of the
former it is only necessary to remark, by way of reminder,
that English equity was, notwithstanding its adoption
of new and important principles, essentially a supplement
or appendix to the common law, and that because of it
that law was much better fitted to meet the requirements
of the sixteenth century and pass successfully the crisis
which it then encountered.3
Statute law began nominally in the thirteenth century.
But there had always been law made by the central gov-
ernment, by the king in Hs Council; and king and Council
have continued, upon occasion, to make it. In the four-
teenth century, a new law-making element, the House of
most heartily pray that our law may long remain unsdeatiic.1'—Adams
Civilisation during the Middle Ages, p. 100, note 2.
1 Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance, p. 30.
2 Maitland in Sketch of English Legal History, p. 37.
3 See above, pp. 218-225.