ever weary of extolling his
lucidity and precision.

But though English lawyers were thus expressly forbidden in 1362 to
plead in Law-French, they persisted in using the hybrid jargon for
reports and treatises so late as George II.'s reign; and for an equal
length of time they seized every occasion to introduce scraps of
Law-French into their speeches at the bars of the different courts. It
should be observed that these antiquarian advocates were enabled thus to
display their useless erudition by the provisions of King Edward's act,
which, while it forbade French _pleadings_, specially ordained the
retention of French terms.

Roger North's essay 'On the study of the Laws' contains amusing
testimony to the affection with which the lawyers of his day regarded
their Law-French, and also shows how largely it was used till the close
of the seventeenth century by the orators of Westminster Hall. "Here I
must stay to observe," says the author, enthusiastically, "the
necessity of a student's early application to learn the old Law-French,
for these books, and most others of considerable authority, are
delivered in it. Some may think that because the Law-French is no better
than the old Norman corrupted, and now a deformed hotch-potch of the
English and Latin mixed together, it is not fit for a polite spark to
foul himself with; but this nicety is so desperate a mistake, that
lawyer and Law-French are coincident; one will not stand without the
other." So enamored was he of the grace and excellence of law-reporters'
French, that he regarded it as a delightful study for a man of fashion,
and maintained that no barrister would do justice to the law and the
interests of his clients who did not season his sentences with Norman
verbiage. "The law," he held, "is scarcely expressible properly in
English, and when it is done, it must be _Francoise_, or very uncouth."

Edward III.'s measure prohibitory of French pleadings had therefore
comparatively little influence on the educational course of
law-students. The published reports of trials, known by the name of
Year-Books, were composed in French, until the series terminated in the
time of Henry VIII.; and so late as George II.'s reign, Chief Baron
Comyn preferred such words as 'chemin,' 'dismes,' and 'baron and feme,'
to such words as 'highway,' 'tithes,' 'husband and wife.' More liberal
than the majority of his legal brethren, even as his enlightenment with
regard to public affairs ex