English Law and theRenaissance
London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,
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[All Rights reserved.]
English Law and the
Renaissance
(The Rede Lecture for 1901)
with some Notes
by
Frederic William Maitland, LL.D., Hon. D.C.L.,
of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law,
Downing Professor of the Laws of England
in the University of Cambridge
Cambridge
at the University Press
1901
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO
JAMES BRADLEY THAYER, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF LAW
AT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
ENGLISH LAWAND THE RENAISSANCE.
Mr Vice-Chancellor and Fellow-Students:
Were we to recall to life the good SirRobert Rede who endowed lecturers in thisuniversity, we might reasonably hope that hewould approve and admire the fruit that inthese last years has been borne by his liberality.And then, as in private duty or private interestbound, I would have him speak thus: ‘Yes, itis marvellous and more than marvellous thistriumph of the sciences that my modest rent-chargestimulates you annually to record; nor doI wonder less at what my lecturers have said ofhumane letters and the fine arts, of the historyof all times and of my time, of Erasmus whom[2]I remember, and that age of the Renaissance(as you call it) in which (so you say) I lived.But there is one matter, one science (for suchwe accounted it) of which they seem to havesaid little or nothing; and it happens to be amatter, a science, in which I used to take someinterest and which I endeavoured to teach. Youhave not, I hope, forgotten that I was not onlyan English judge, but, what is more, a readerin English law[1].’
Six years ago a great master of history,whose untimely death we are deploring, workedthe establishment of the Rede lectures intothe picture that he drew for us of The EarlyRenaissance in England[2]. He brought Rede’sname into contact with the names of Fisher andMore. That, no doubt, is the right environment,and this pious founder’s care for the humanities,for logic and for philosophy natural and moralwas a memorable sign of the times. Neverthelessthe fact remains that, had it not been forhis last will and testament, we should hardly[3]have known Sir Robert except as an Englishlawyer who throve so well in his profession thathe became Chief Justice of the Common Bench.And the rest of the acts of Robert Rede—wemight say—and the arguments that he urgedand the judgments that h