AN OFFER TO KING JAMES

OF

A DIGEST

TO BE MADE OF THE

LAWS OF ENGLAND.

Most Excellent Sovereign,

AMONGST the degrees and acts of sovereign, or rather heroical honour, the first or second is the person and merit of a lawgiver. Princes that govern well are fathers of the people: but if a father breed his son well, or allow him well while he liveth, but leave him nothing at his death, whereby both he and his children, and his childrens children, may be the better, surely the care and piety of a father is not in him complete. So Kings, if they make a portion of an age happy by their good government, yet if they do not make testaments, as God Almighty doth, whereby a perpetuity of good may descend to their country, they are but mortal and transitory benefactors. Domitian, a few days before he died, dreamed that a golden head did rise upon the nape of his neck: which was truly performed in the golden age that followed his times for five successions. But Kings, by giving their subjects good laws, may, if they will, in their own time, join and graft this golden head upon their own necks after their death. Nay, they may make Nabuchodonozor's image of monarchy golden from head to foot. And if any of the meaner sort of politics, that are sighted only to see the worst of things, think, that laws are but cobwebs, and that good Princes will do well without them, and bad will not stand much upon them; the discourse is neither good nor wise. For certain it is, that good laws are some bridle to bad princes, and

as a very wall about government. And if tyrants sometimes make a breach into them, yet they mollify › even tyranny itself, as Solon's laws did the tyranny of Pisistratus: and then commonly they get up again, upon the first advantage of better times. Other means to perpetuate the memory and merits of sovereign Princes are inferior to this. Buildings of temples, tombs, palaces, theatres, and the like, are honourable things, and look big upon posterity: but Constantine the Great gave the name well to those works, when he used to call Trajan, that was a great builder, Parietaria, wall-flower, because his name was upon so many walls: so if that be the matter, that a King would turn wall-flower, or pellitory of the wall, with cost he may. Adrian's vein was better, for his mind was to wrestle a fall with time; and being a great progressor through all the Roman empire, whenever he found any decays of bridges, or highways, or cuts of rivers and sewers, or walls, or banks, or the like, he gave substantial order for their repair with the better. He gave also multitudes of charters and liberties for the comfort of corporations and companies in decay: so that his bounty did strive with the ruins of time. But yet this, though it were an excellent disposition, went but in effect to the cases and shells of a commonwealth. It was nothing to virtue or vice. A bad man might indifferently take the benefit and ease of his ways and bridges, as well as a good; and bad people might purchase good charters. Surely the better works of perpetuity in Princes are those, that wash the inside of the cup; such as are foundations of colleges and lectures for learning and education of youth; likewise foundations and institutions of orders and fraternities, for nobleness, enterprise, and obedience, and the like, But yet these also are but like plantations of orchards and gardens, in plots and spots of ground here and there; they do not till over the whole kingdom, and make it fruitful, as doth the establishing of good laws and ordinances; which makes a whole nation to be as a well-ordered college or foundation.

This kind of work, in the memory of times, is rare

enough to shew it excellent: and yet not so rare, as to make it suspected for impossible, inconvenient, or unsafe. Moses, that gave laws to the Hebrews, because he was the scribe of God himself, is fitter to be named for honour's sake to other lawgivers, than to be numbered or ranked amongst them. Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon, are examples for themes of grammar scholars. For ancient personages and characters nowa-days use to wax children again; though that parable of Pindarus be true, the best thing is water: for common and trivial things are many times the best, and rather despised upon pride, because they are vulgar, than upon cause or use. Certain it is, that the laws of those three lawgivers had great prerogatives. The first of fame, because they were the pattern amongst the Grecians: the second of lasting, for they continued longest without alteration: the third, of a spirit of reviver, to be often oppressed, and often restored.

Amongst the seven Kings of Rome four were lawgivers for it is most true, that a discourser of Italy saith; "there was never state so well swaddled in the infancy, as the Roman was by the virtue of their first Kings; which was a principal cause of the wonder"ful growth of that state in after-times.”

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The Decemvirs laws were laws upon laws, not the original; for they grafted laws of Græcia upon the Roman stock of laws and customs: but such was their success, as the twelve tables which they compiled were the main body of the laws which framed and wielded the great body of that estate. These lasted a long time, with some supplementals and the Pretorian edicts in albo; which were, in respect of laws, as writing tables in respect of brass; the one to be put in and out, as the other is permanent. Lucius Cornelius Sylla reformed the laws of Rome: for that man had three singularities, which never tyrant had but he; that he was a lawgiver, that he took part with the nobility, and that he turned private man, not upon fear, but upon confidence.

Cæsar long after desired to imitate him only in the

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first, for otherwise he relied upon new men; and for resigning his power Seneca describeth him right; Cæsar gladium cito condidit, nunquam posuit, Cæsar soon sheathed his sword, but never put it off. And himself took it upon him, saying in scorn of Sylla's resignation; Sylla nescivit literas, dictare non potuit, Sylla knew no letters, he could not dictate." But for the part of a lawgiver, Cicero giveth him the attribute; Cæsar, si ab eo quæreretur, quid egisset in toga; leges se respondisset multas et præclaras tulisse; "If 66 you had asked Cæsar what he did in the gown, he "would have answered, that he made many excellent "laws." His nephew Augustus did tread the same steps, but with deeper print, because of his long reign in peace; whereof one of the poets of his time saith,

Pace data terris, animum ad civilia vertit Jura suum; legesque tulit justissimus auctor. From that time there was such a race of wit and authority, between the commentaries and decisions of the lawyers, and the edicts of the emperors, as both law and lawyers were out of breath. Whereupon Justinian in the end recompiled both, and made a body of laws such as might be wielded, which himself calleth gloriously, and yet not above truth, the edifice or structure of a sacred temple of justice, built indeed out of the former ruins of books, as materials, and some novel constitutions of his own.

In Athens they had Serviri, as Æschines observeth, which were standing commissioners, who did watch to discern what laws waxed improper for the times, and what new law did in any branch cross a former law, and so ex officio propounded their repeal.

King Edgar collected the laws of this kingdom, and gave them the strength of a faggot bound, which formerly were dispersed; which was more glory to him, than his sailing about this island with a potent fleet: for that was, as the Scripture saith, via navis in mari, "the way of a ship in the sea;" it vanished, but this lasteth. Alphonso the wise, the ninth of that name, King of Castile, compiled the digest of the laws of

Spain, intitled the Siete Partidas; an excellent work, which he finished in seven years. And as Tacitus noteth well, that the capitol, though built in the beginnings of Rome, yet was fit for the great monarchy that came after; so that building of laws sufficeth the greatness of the empire of Spain, which since hath ensued.

Lewis XI. had it in his mind, though he performed it not, to have made one constant law of France, extracted out of the civil Roman law, and the customs of provinces which are various, and the King's edicts, which with the French are statutes. Surely he might have done well, if, like as he brought the crown, as he said himself, from Page, so he had brought his people from Lackey; not to run up and down for their laws to the civil law, and the ordinances and the customs and the discretions of courts, and discourses of philosophers, as they use to do.

King Henry VIII. in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, was authorized by parliament to nominate thirtytwo commissioners, part ecclesiastical, and part temporal, to purge the canon law, and to make it agreeable to the law of God, and the law of the land; but it took not effect: for the acts of that King were commonly rather proffers and fames, than either wellgrounded, or well pursued: but, I doubt, I err in producing so many examples. For as Cicero said to Cæsar, so I may say to your Majesty, Nil vulgare te dignum videri possit. Though indeed this well understood is far from vulgar: for that the laws of the most kingdoms and states have been like buildings of many pieces, and patched up from time to time according to occasions, without frame or model.

Now for the laws of England, if I shall speak my opinion of them without partiality either to my profession or country, for the matter and nature of them, I hold them wise, just, and moderate laws: they give to God, they give to Cæsar, they give to the subject, what appertaineth. It is true they are as mixt as our language, compounded of British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, Norman customs: and surely as our language