the cellar, and takes the spiggot, in the meantime all the beer runs about the house. When his friends are absent, the king will be lost. LXXIII. KNIGHT'S SERVICE. KNIGHT'S service in earnest means nothing, for the lords are bound to wait upon the king when he goes to war with a foreign enemy, with, it may be, one man and one horse; and he that does not, is to be rated so much as shall seem good to the next parliament. And what will that be? So 'tis for a private man that holds of a gentleman. ΤΟ LXXIV. LAND. 1. WHEN men did let their lands under foot, the tenants would fight for their landlords, so that way they had their retribution; but now they will do nothing for them; nay, be the first, if but a constable bid them, that shall lay the landlord by the heels; and therefore 'tis vanity and folly not to take the full value. 2. Allodium is a law-word contrary to feudum, and it signifies land that holds of nobody. So regna allodiata are kingdoms that are not held in fee of any body. We 20 have no such lands in England. 'Tis a true proposition; all the land in England is held, either immediately or mediately, of the king. 1. 12. under foot] i. e. for less than their value. See Bacon, Essay 41, Of Usury: 'they would be forced to sell their means, be it lands or goods, far under foot.' H LXXV. LANGUAGE. 1. To a living tongue new words may be added, but not to a dead tongue, as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, &c. 2. Latimer is the corruption of latiner, it signifies he that interprets Latin; and though he interpreted French, Spanish, or Italian, he was called the king's latimer, that is, the king's interpreter. 3. If time, and the language spoken now, you will find the differ10 ence to be just as if a man had a cloak that he wore plain you look upon the language spoken in the Saxon in queen Elizabeth's days, and since has put in here a piece of red, and there a piece of blue, here a piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. We borrow words from the French, Italian, Latin, as every pedantic man pleases. 4. We have more words than notions; half-a-dozen words for the same thing. Sometimes we put a new signification to an old word, as when we call a piece, a gun. The word gun was in use in England for an engine to cast a thing 1. 4. Latimer] sometimes spelt Latiner or Latinier, has the different senses of interpreter, herald, and secretary, all based on the original sense-one who knows several languages, and who is thus qualified to act in any one of the above three capacities. See Warton, Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. p. 65, text and note (ed. 1840, in 3 vols.), where numerous instances are given of its use by early English and French writers. 1. 17. The word gun, &c.] Conf.: 'Theo othre into the wallis stygh (climb) King Alisaunder, pt. i. chap. 12, 1. 3268. The date of this poem is very early in the fourteenth century and therefore before gunpowder was in use. See Warton, Hist. of English Poetry, sec. 6. Weber's note on the passage is : 'As to the word gonne, we have here perhaps the earliest use of it that can now be adduced, and it certainly signifies a machine for expelling balls of some kind. . . . A gun might have originally been a machine of the catapult kind; and on the adoption of powder, having ... from a man, long before there was any gunpowder found out. 5. Words must be fitted to a man's mouth. 'Twas well said of the fellow that was to make a speech for my lord mayor; he desired to take measure of his lordship's mouth. LXXVI. LAW. I. A MAN may plead not guilty, and yet tell no lie; for by the law no man is bound to accuse himself: so that when I say, Not guilty, the meaning is, as if I should say by way of paraphrase, I am not so guilty as to tell you; if 10 you will bring me to trial, and have me punished for this you lay to my charge, prove it against me. 2. Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him. 3. The king of Spain was outlawed in Westminster-hall, changed its form, might still retain its name.' Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 306 (Edinburgh, 1810). See also Chaucer, in his description of a battle between Antony and Augustus: 'With grisly soune out gooth the grete gonne, And hertely they hurtelen al attones, And fro the toppe downe cometh the grete stones.' Legend of Good Women. Legenda Cleopatrie, 1. 58. This may, of course, be an anachronism, as the use of gunpowder was known to Chaucer and is referred to by him elsewhere. But the general drift of the passage makes for the earlier sense of the word. That after the invention of gunpowder the word soon passed to the sense which it now bears, appears from a passage in Grafton's Chronicle in ann. 1380: In this time, as saith Polidore in his boke De Inventoribus rerum, gonnes were first in use, which were invented by one of Germany. But, saith he, lest he should be cursed for ever that was the author of this invention, therefore his name is hidden and not known.' Chronicle, p. 429 (London, 1809). I being of counsel against him. A merchant had recovered costs against him in a suit, which because it could not be got, we advised to have him outlawed for his not appearing, and so he was. As soon as Gondomar heard that, he presently sent the money; by reason, if his master had stood outlawed, he could not have had the benefit of the law; which would have been very prejudicial, there being then many suits depending betwixt the king of Spain and our English merchants. 4. Every law is a contract betwixt the king and the people, and therefore to be kept. An hundred men may owe me a hundred pounds, as well as one man, and shall they not pay me because they are stronger than I? Objection. Oh! but they lose all if they keep that law. Answer. Let them look to the making of their bargains. If I sell my lands, and when I have done, one comes and tells me I have nothing else to keep me, I and my wife and children must starve, if I part with my land: must I not therefore let them have my land that have bought it, and 20 paid for it? 1 5. The parliament may declare law, as well as any inferior court may, viz. the king's bench. In this or that particular case the king's bench will declare unto you what the law is; but that binds nobody but whom that case concerns: so the highest court, the parliament, may do, but not declare law, [that is] make law, that was never heard of before. 1. 25. but not declare law &c.] In a Declaration or Remonstrance of the Lords and Commons (May, 1642), an uncontrolled power of declaring law as they please is claimed for the Parliament in direct terms. See, 'If the question be, whether that be law which the Lords and Commons have once declared to be so, who shall be the Judge? Not his Majesty; for the King judgeth not of matters of law but by his courts, and his courts, though sitting by his authority, expect not his assent in matters of law. Nor any other courts, for they cannot judge in that case because they are inferior, no appeal to them from Parliament, the judgment whereof is, in the eye of the King's judgment in his highest court, though the King in LXXVII. LAW OF NATURE. I CANNOT fancy to myself what the law of nature means, but the law of God. How should I know I ought not to steal, I ought not to commit adultery, unless somebody had told me so? Surely 'tis because I have been told so. 'Tis not because I think I ought not to do them, nor because you think I ought not; if so, our minds might change: whence then comes the restraint? From a higher power; nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself, for I may untie myself again; nor an equal cannot bind me, for we 10 may untie one another. It must be a superior, even God Almighty. If two of us make a bargain, why should either his person be neither present nor assenting thereto.' Rushworth, Collections, iv. 698. This can hardly be distinguished from a claim to do what Selden terms 'make law that was never heard of before.' Selden's restriction applies, of course, to Parliament sitting in its judicial, not in its legislative capacity. See 'Power, State,' sec. 8, where he lays it down that 'the Parliament of England has no arbitrary power in point of Judicature, but in point of making law.' 1. 2. I cannot fancy to myself &c.] This is Selden's position in his treatise De Jure Naturali, &c., apud Ebraeos. He there treats the Law of Nature as identical with certain precepts handed down by Noah to his descendants. These precepts were of Divine origin, communicated by God to Adam, and by Adam to Noah. The same theory will be found in Gratian's work on the Canon Law (written about 1150) known as the Decretum Gratiani, and long an accepted authority for the subject of which it treats. But it appears there in a different form and without the laboured proofs which Selden accumulates from Jewish traditional sources. See 'Humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali videlicet jure et moribus. Jus naturae est, quod in lege et evangelio continetur, quo quisque jubetur alii facere quod sibi vult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre quod sibi nolit fieri. Unde Christus in Evangelio: "Omnia quaecunque vultis ut faciant vobis homines, et vos, eadem facite illis. Haec est enim lex et prophetae." 'Hinc Isodorus in V libro Etymologiarum [c. 2] ait. Omnes leges aut divinae sunt aut humanae. Divinae naturâ, humanae moribus constant.' Corpus Juris Canonici. Friedberg, vol. i. p. 1 (ed. 2, 1879). |