s are extant in a regular series from the reign of
king Edward the second inclusive; and from his time to that of Henry
the eighth were taken by the prothonotaries, or chief scribes of the
court, at the expence of the crown, and published _annually_, whence
they are known under the denomination of the _year books_. And it is
much to be wished that this beneficial custom had, under proper
regulations, been continued to this day: for, though king James the
first at the instance of lord Bacon appointed two reporters with a
handsome stipend for this purpose, yet that wise institution was soon
neglected, and from the reign of Henry the eighth to the present time
this task has been executed by many private and cotemporary hands; who
sometimes through haste and inaccuracy, sometimes through mistake and
want of skill, have published very crude and imperfect (perhaps
contradictory) accounts of one and the same determination. Some of the
most valuable of the antient reports are those published by lord chief
justice Coke; a man of infinite learning in his profession, though not
a little infected with the pedantry and quaintness of the times he
lived in, which appear strongly in all his works. However his writings
are so highly esteemed, that they are generally cited without the
author's name[r].

[Footnote r: His reports, for instance, are stiled, [Greek: kat'
exochen], _the reports_; and in quoting them we usually say, 1 or 2
Rep. not 1 or 2 Coke's Rep. as in citing other authors. The reports of
judge Croke are also cited in a peculiar manner, by the name of those
princes, in whose reigns the cases reported in his three volumes were
determined; viz. Qu. Elizabeth, K. James, and K. Charles the first; as
well as by the number of each volume. For sometimes we call them, 1,
2, and 3 Cro. but more commonly Cro. Eliz. Cro. Jac. and Cro. Car.]

BESIDES these reporters, there are also other authors, to whom great
veneration and respect is paid by the students of the common law. Such
are Glanvil and Bracton, Britton and Fleta, Littleton and Fitzherbert,
with some others of antient date, whose treatises are cited as
authority; and are evidence that cases have formerly happened in which
such and such points were determined, which are now become settled and
first principles. One of the last of these methodical writers in point
of time, whose works are of any intrinsic authority in the courts of
justice, and do not entirely depend on the str