DU CANGE-SCOTCH ACTS.

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books-all useful, all most accurate. There are two departments in which he stands above competition. He is a zealous Presbyterian, and not less a hearty Scot. His edition of Knox-no easy work-is excellent; but if the reader of Knox wants to supplement his reading with a knowledge of the later Scotch Reformed Church, where is he to find the history of all the "godly bands," and covenants, and the counter-covenants, but in the works of Mr. Laing! His editions of our old Scots poetshis Dunbar, Lindsay, Henryson-contrast advantageously with those of the scholars of the last generation, who really knew little of the old Scots language.

For the mere language of charters we have no guide so good and so full as Du Cange. I use a little edition by Adelung, which embodies Carpentier's Supplement, there is also a convenient abridgment in one volume, published by the Abbé Migne; but the book in its glory is to be seen in the last quarto Paris edition which stands over the fireplace in our catalogue-room. Big and exhaustive as it seems to be, I need not tell you that a Frenchman can never be a satisfactory guide to Scotch charters, but the Supplementum Scoticum to Du Cange's Dictionary is yet to be written. All that Sir John Skene did in his little book De Verborum Significatione, was known and used by Du Cange, and it is mortifying to say that some of the worst errors in that grand Dictionary of Middle

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age Europe are those copied from our countryman's hasty, ill-considered work.

I have told you already of the great national work, the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, the foundation, of course, of all history and law of the country; but I wish to direct your attention to some circumstances which make the first volume of that collection more than a mere gathering of old laws and Acts of Parliament. The apparatus placed at the beginning of that volume contains a selection of what we thought most curious and valuable of ancient charters, of old forms of process, of vestiges of prehistoric legislation of great inventories of the muniments and records of the kingdom before they were lost or destroyed. That edition, which is only now finished, embraces, at the end of Vol. VI. Part II., the documents of the Government of Scotland during the time of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. There will also be soon published a General Index of the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, full of our law and history from David I. to the Union, A.D. 1124 to 1707.

Amongst English books one of the most pleasing to read, and, I believe, a book of great accuracy, is the Honourable Daines Barrington's Observations on the Statutes, a goodly quarto.

Thomas Blount's Ancient Tenures and Jocular Customs of Manors, you will find a very entertaining and instructive book.

SCOTCH RECORD PUBLICATIONS.

297

Oughton upon Consistorial Form of Process is full of the curiosity of the old subject, and with great precision and legal learning.

On a subject which we Scotsmen must take help from England to study, you will find valuable assistance in the works of White Kennet, who studied the law of parishes, of tithes, of rectorial and vicarial rights, of impropriations and appropriations, and has left us the results in a great many volumes of very pleasant and popular reading. He wrote about the beginning of last century.

The works of Madox-his Firma Burgi, his Formulare Anglicanum, his History of the Exchequer, are very useful upon subjects where the law and custom of England are almost identical with our

own.

Sir Henry Spelman, Hickes, Skinner, Lye, Fleetwood's Cronicon Pretiosum-an attempt to fix the value of money at different periods-Sir Henry Ellis (especially his Dissertation upon Domesday Book), Dugdale's Origines Judiciales, Cowell's Dictionary, not for its politics, the Registrum omnium Brevium, London 1595, Stubbs's Documents of English Constitutional History, should at least be known and accessible to the student of Scots law and history.

I need only mention the Record publications of our own country since the time when Mr. Thomson introduced the study of records. Besides the Acts

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of Parliament, he published two volumes of Judicial Proceedings-the oldest reports of law cases we have, for they are of the middle of the 15th century. These are not so well known as they should be. The Registrum Magni Sigilli is a careful print of the Great Seal Register, from the reign of Robert I. to that of Robert III. The Retours condensed in three volumes, down to the year 1700, are already very well known to the profession of the Law, and extremely useful. It may not be so well known that Mr. Lindsay has made some progress in continuing the series upon a still more condensed plan. The Chamberlain Rolls, that is, the Public Accounts of Scotland from 1326 to 1453, a mine of vast richness, has hardly been worked at all by our historians. It is a poor apology that it is difficult reading, and that the difficulty does not disappear when the original MS. rolls are turned into print.

A great series of the most authentic materials of the law and history of England has been produced in our own time with admirable care and correctness under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. To Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy and his assistants in Chancery Lane it is owing that the historical student of England can never again be left to the guidance of rash speculation or reckless mis-statements. So much done for a neighbouring country is not without its effect upon ours.

my

APPENDIX.

THE fable to which I allude at page 240, and which I read to class in illustration of the forms of the old Consistorial Court, is one of Henryson's, which has had the good fortune to be commented on by Lord Hailes, edited by Mr. D. Laing, and illustrated by Lord Neaves. Henryson calls it the Tale of the Dog, the Sheep, and the Wolf.

A false Dog schemed to defraud a simple Sheep, who, he alleged, owed him a loaf worth five shillings. The innocent Sheep was the common victim. Pleading poverty, the pursuer prosecuted in the Consistorial Court, where a fraudful Wolf was judge, that time, and bore authority and jurisdiction, who sent out a summons in common style.

"I, Maister Wolf, partless of fraud and gyle,
Under the pains of high suspension,

Of great cursing and interdiction,

Sir Sheep I charge thee straitlie to compear
And answer to a Dog before me here."

The Sheep appears, but without advocate, and answers, "declining" the judge and all the members of the Court as his known enemies, and with reason, for, said he,—You

"Sir Wolf-with tuskis ravenous

Has slain full many kinismen of mine;
Therefore as judge suspect I you decline."

And the corbie whom they had made apparitor, pykit had full mony sheep's eyn.