stigator
ambitious of entering on this arduous field. The princely collector
will, of course, put himself in possession of the magnificent edition of
the Statutes issued by the Record Commission, but let not the
unprofessional person who must look short of this imagine that he will
find satisfaction in the prim pages of a professional lawyer's modern
edition. These, indeed, are not truly the Statutes at large, but rather
their pedantic and conventional descendants, who have taken out letters
of administration to their wild ancestors. They omit all the repealed
Statutes in which these ancestors might be found really at large sowing
their wild oats, and consequently all that would give them interest and
zest for those in search of such qualities.

It is not, for instance, in the decorous quartos of Roughhead, but in
the hoary blackletter folios, looking older than they are--for
blackletter adhered to the Statutes after it had been cast off by other
literature--that one will find such specimens of ancestral legislation
as the following:--

ATTORNEYS.--(33 Henry VI. c. 7.)

"Item: Whereas of time not long past, within the city of Norwich, and
the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, there were no more but six or eight
atturneys at the most coming to the King's Courts, in which time great
tranquillity reigned in the said city and counties, little trouble or
vexation was made by untrue or foreign suits, and now so it is, that in
the said city and counties there be four score atturneys or more, the
more part of them having no other thing to live upon, but only his gain
by the practise of atturneyship: and also the more part of them not
being of sufficient knowledge to be an atturney, which come to every
fair, market, and other places, where is any assembly of people,
exhorting, procuring, moving, and inciting the people to attempt untrue
and foreign suits for small trespasses, little offences, and small sums
of debt, whose actions be triable and determinable in Court Barons,
whereby proceed many suits, more of evil will and malice than of truth
of the thing, to the manifold vexations and no little damage of the
inhabitants of the said city and counties, and all to the perpetual
diminution of all the Court Barons in the said counties, unless
convenient remedy be provided in this behalf. The foresaid Lord the
King, considering the premises, by the advice, assent, and authority
aforesaid, hath ordained and stablished that at all