Читать книгу A Concise History of the Common Law - Theodore F. T. Plucknett - Страница 17

The rest of the reign is occupied with the peaceful activities of the Justiciar, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, a Norman from Caen, who like so many of his race had something of the efficiency expert in his blood. Official tradition long respected him for his organisation of the Exchequer on strict business lines, and to him we owe the series of “Great Rolls of the Pipe”. The earliest in existence is dated 1130 and contains important legal as well as financial information. Some of the earlier rolls must be lost; but with a few gaps there is an almost complete series of Pipe Rolls from 1156 down to 1832—a remarkable sign of the permanence of Roger’s work. In this reign, therefore, we may place the elaboration of an efficient governmental organisation at Westminster. In local government Henry I was equally active; eleven untrustworthy sheriffs were dismissed in 1129; justiciars were sent on circuit to look after the pleas of the Crown (and they soon usurped for their master immense jurisdiction by asserting that any matter which concerned the King’s peace could be treated as a plea of the Crown), while it is clear that the Norman sheriffs were still administering in the county what was essentially Anglo-Saxon law, for we have some curious treatises (written between 1113 and 1118) which are attempts to state that old law in language that the Normans could understand.² This in fact is the justification for the statement we have already made to the effect that the period of Anglo-Saxon law extended later than the Norman Conquest, and at least as late as the year 1100 or thereabouts. We therefore see that in the reign of Henry I the law was substantially Anglo-Saxon and administered by the sheriffs locally according to ancient custom (which was certainly not the same all over the country). As yet there was very little that could be called “common law”. So far there was only a great administrative machine well on the way towards a complete domination of the realm. From this great machine there will develop the future common law.¹ Only in Sicily was such efficient administration to be found, and there too it was the work of Norman invaders.²

Henry’s death was a great loss to the nation:

“then there was tribulation soon in the land, for every man that could forthwith robbed another.... A good man he was and there was great awe of him. No man durst misdo against another in his time. He made peace for man and beast. Whoso bare his burden of gold and silver, no man durst say him aught but good.”³

The reign of King Stephen (1135-1154) is frequently called “the Anarchy”, so great were the disorders which filled it attendant upon the disputed title to the Crown. The machine which Henry I had perfected needed a firm hand to run it, and Stephen was content to let things drift. Art and letters, indeed, flourished, and Vacarius came to Oxford to teach Roman law and to write a less expensive text-book for poor English law students,⁴ but from the point of view of Norman efficiency the reign was disappointing: still,

“to those who do not place order above everything and who realise how oppressive Henry’s government was becoming in spite of its legality, it must always remain a moot question whether Stephen’s reign was such a total set-back as the ecclesiastical writers of the day would have us believe”.⁵