do was to state that he was a priest and he was at once set free. In
other words, he could not be punished. That doesn't concern us; but, I
suppose, it resulted from the old notion that all priests were subject
only to Rome, and to the church courts, and not to the civil law
courts; and consequently when a priest was attempted to be tried in a
civil law court, it was a way of doing what we should call "pleading
to the jurisdiction" of the court. Later, as time went on, in England
it was greatly abused, especially when there got to be clerks who
were not priests. When it meant anybody who could read and write, and
anybody who had committed a murder had only to say, "I can read and
write," and be set free, it led to an extraordinary state of things.
So, from time to time, they modified the benefit of the clergy, until
ultimately it was abolished entirely; first by not allowing it in high
offences like murder; then by imposing certain slight punishment--they
were "burned in the hand"; then by applying it only to the first
offence, and so on, until they got rid of it entirely; and this
Statute of Marlborough is simply one of the first of that long chain
of statutes which finally did away with it and prevented people from
getting rid of a criminal prosecution merely because they knew how to
read and write or were priests.

In 1275 I note the first use of the word parliament. I have used it
from the beginning, but it is important to remember that the thing
was not _called_ parliament until 1275. Before that it was called
the Great Council or the King's Council, and in Saxon times the
Witenagemot.

Then we come down to the Statute of Westminster I. That is considered
a great landmark in statutory legislation mainly because it is the
first attempt to establish a code, or, at least, a large collection of
the laws of England. It is an attempt to put what they supposed to be
a good part of them into writing. We have no codes in this country,
as a rule; nor to-day in England; the ordinary Anglo-Saxon does
not believe in codes. It is the French and Germans who have codes.
Nevertheless, you often find collections of statutes. It is important
not to confound these things with codes, because they never pretend to
be complete. Many States in this country never make revision of the
statutes. Nevertheless, every ten or twenty years they will print a
collection of the statutes arranged alphabetically. In some States, as
in Massachusett