the military art, he accompanied his royal master into the field, and was taken prisoner with him at the battle of Lewes.

A.D. 1268.

Chief

Justice.

The royal authority being re-established by the victory at Evesham, he resumed his functions as a Puisne Judge; and for two years more there are entries proving that he continued to act in that capacity. At last, on the 8th of March, 1268, He is made 52 Henry III., he was appointed "Capitalis Justiciarius ad placita coram Rege tenenda." Unless his fees or presents were very high, he must have found the reward of his labours in his judicial dignity, for his salary was very small. Hugh Bigod and Hugh le Despencer had received 1000 marks a year "ad se sustentandum in officio Capitalis Justitiarii Angliæ," but Chief Justice De Brus was reduced to 100 marks a year. Such delight did he take in playing the Judge, that he quietly submitted both to loss of power and loss of profit.

He loses the office on the

death of Henry III.

He remained Chief Justice till the conclusion of this reign, a period of four years and a half, during which he alternately went circuits and presided in Westminster Hall. None of his decisions have come down to us, and we are very imperfectly informed respecting the nature of the cases which came before him. The boundaries of jurisdiction between the Parliament, the Aula Regis, and the rising tribunal afterwards called the Court of King's Bench, seem to have been then very much undefined.

On the demise of the Crown, Robert de Brus was desirous of being reappointed; but it was A.D. 1272. resolved to fill the office with a regularly

trained lawyer, and there is reason to fear that he was not much better qualified for it than the military chiefs who had presided in the AULA REGIS before the common law of England was considered a science. He was so

much mortified by being passed over, that he resolved to renounce England for ever; and he would not even wait to pay his duty to Edward I., now returning from the holy wars.

He returns to Scotland.

The ex-Chief Justice posted off for his native country, and established himself in his castle of Lochmaben, where he amused himself by sitting in person in his court baron, and where all that he laid down was, no doubt, heard with reverence, however lightly his law might have been dealt with in Westminster Hall. Occasionally he paid visits to the court of his kinsman, Alexander III., but he does not appear to have taken any part in Scottish politics till the untimely death of that monarch, which, from a state of peace and prosperity, plunged the country into confusion.

A.D. 1286.

A.D. 1290.

and misery.

He is a com

negotiating the marriage

of the Maid

of Norway

of Edward I.

There was now only the life of an infant female, residing in a distant land, between him and his plausible claim to the Scottish crown. He was nomimissioner for nated one of the negotiators for settling the marriage between her and the son of Edward I., which, if it had taken place, with the son would have entirely changed the history of the island of Great Britain. From his intimate knowledge both of Scotland and England, it is probable that the "Articles" were chiefly of his framing, and it must be allowed that they are just and equitable. For his own interest, as well as for the independence of his native country, he took care to stipulate that, "failing Margaret and her issue, the kingdom of Scotland should return to the nearest heirs, to whom of right it ought to return, wholly, freely, absolutely, and without any subjection.'

* Some historians, both English and Scotch, have supposed that the Robert

Bruce employed in this negotiation was the son of the Chief Justice who so ro

On her death

he claims the crown of

Scotland.

The Maid of Norway having died on her voyage home, the ex-Chief Justice immediately appeared at Perth with a formidable retinue, and was in hopes of being immediately crowned King at Scone;-and he had nearly accomplished his object, for John Baliol, his most formidable competitor in point of right, always feeble and remiss in action, was absent in England. But, from the vain wish to prevent future disputes by a solemn decision of the controversy after all parties should have been heard, the Scotch nobility in an evil hour agreed to refer it, according to the fashion of the age, to the arbitration of a neighbouring sovereign ; and fixed upon Edward I. of England, their wily neighbour.

A.D. 1291.

He acknowledges

Edward I. as

Lord Para

mount of

It is a great reproach to the memory of the ex-Chief Justice that, at the famous meeting on the banks of the Tweed, when the English Chancellor, in the presence of the notables of both nations, asked him "whether he acknowledged Edward as Lord Paramount of Scotland, and whether he was willing to ask and receive judgment from him in that character, he expressly, definitively, and absolutely declared his assent.'

Scotland.

He afterwards pleaded his own cause with great dexterity, and many supposed that he would succeed. Upon the doctrine of representation, which is familiar to us, Baliol seems clearly to have the better claim, as he was descended from the eldest daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon; but Bruce was one degree nearer the common stock; and this doctrine, which was not then firmly established, had never been applied to the descent of the crown.†

204.

mantically became Earl of Carrick, by father.-See Dalrymple's Annals, i. 198, being forced by the heiress of that great domain to marry her; but Lord Hales clearly proves that it was Robert the

VOL. I.

*R. Fœd., vol. ii. 545.

+ See Dalrymple's Annals, i. 215-243. G

A.D. 1292. Decided against him.

When Edward I. determined in favour of Baliol, influenced probably less by the arguments in his favour than by the consideration that from the weakness of his character he was likely to be a more submissive vassal, Robert de Brus complained bitterly that he was wronged, and resolutely refused to acknowledge the title of his rival. He retired in disgust to his castle of Loch

His death.

maben, where he died in November, 1295, in the seventy-second year of his age.

ants.

While resident in England he had married Isabel, His descend- daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by whom he had several sons. Robert, the son of Robert the eldest, became Robert I., and one of the greatest of heroes. The descent of the crown through him to the Stuarts is, of course, universally known. The family of the Chief Justice is still kept up in the male line by the descendants of his younger son, John, among whom are numbered the Earl of Elgin, the Earl of Cardigan, and the Marquess of Aylesbury.*

See Dug. Chr. Ser. Rot. Fin. ii. 79. 545; Dug. Bar. Coll. Peerage.

CHAPTER II.

THE LIVES OF THE CHIEF JUSTICES FROM THE ACCESSION OF

EDWARD I. TO THE APPOINTMENT OF CHIEF JUSTICE TRESILIAN.

A.D. 1272.

Although the

We now arrive at the æra when our judicial institutions were firmly established on the basis on which, with very little alteration, they have remained to the present day. AULA REGIS had existed down to the conclusion of the reign of Henry III., and cases of peculiar importance or difficulty were decided before the Chief Justiciar, assisted by the great officers of state,* it had gradually ceased to be a court of original jurisdiction and it had been separating into distinct tribunals to which different classes of causes were assigned. Edward I., our JUSTINIAN, now not only systematised and reformed the principles of English juris- institutions prudence, but finally framed the courts for the administration of justice as they have subsisted for six centuries. In his time the law did receive so sudden a perfection, that Sir Matthew Hale does not scruple to affirm that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom, than in all the ages

66

* A remnant of the Aula Regis subsisted to our own time in the "Exchequer Chamber" into which cases of great importance and difficulty continued to be adjourned, to be argued before all the judges. The practice of judges reserving points of criminal law-arising before them on the circuit, I consider as having had a similar origin. The rule which

Judicial

of Edw. I.

prevailed-that both in civil and criminal cases the opinions of the majority of the judges in the Exchequer Chamber should over-rule the opinions of the majority of the judges of the court in which the cases originated, and in which formal judgment was to be givenadmits of no other solution.