ury, had professed law at Oxford in 1149.[302] Then
Anglo-Normans and English begin to codify and interpret their laws; they
write general treatises; they collect precedents; and so well do they
understand the utility of precedents that these continue to have in
legal matters, up to this day, an importance which no other nation has
credited them with. Ralph Glanville, Chief Justice under Henry II.,
writes or inspires a "Treatise of the laws and customs of England"[303];
Richard, bishop of London, compiles a "Dialogue of the Exchequer,"[304]
full of wisdom, life, and even a sort of humour; Henry of Bracton,[305]
the most renowned of all, logician, observer, and thinker, composes in
the thirteenth century an ample treatise, of which several
abridgments[306] were afterwards made for the convenience of the judges,
and which is still consulted.

In the monasteries, the great literary occupation consists in the
compiling of chronicles. Historians of Latin tongue abounded in mediaeval
England, nearly every abbey had its own. A register was prepared, with a
loose leaf at the end, "scedula," on which the daily events were
inscribed in pencil, "cum plumbo." At the end of the year the appointed
chronicler, "non quicumque voluerit, sed cui injunctum fuerit," shaped
these notes into a continued narrative, adding his remarks and comments,
and inserting the entire text of the official documents sent by
authority for the monastery to keep, according to the custom of the
time.[307] In other cases, of rarer occurrence, a chronicle was compiled
by some monk who, finding the life in cloister very dull, the offices
very long, and the prayers somewhat monotonous, used writing as a means
of resisting temptations and ridding himself of vain thoughts and the
remembrance of a former worldly life.[308] Thus there exists an almost
uninterrupted series of English chronicles, written in Latin, from the
Conquest to the Renaissance. The most remarkable of these series is that
of the great abbey of St. Albans, founded by Offa, a contemporary of
Charlemagne, and rebuilt by Paul, a monk of Caen, who was abbot in 1077.

Most of these chronicles are singularly impartial; the authors freely
judge the English and the French, the king and the people, the Pope,
Harold and William. They belong to that Latin country and that religious
world which had no frontiers. The cleverest among them are remarkable
for their knowledge of the ancients, for the high idea they