252 HARVARD LAW RE VIE W. Histories. These have been collected by a competent and careful hand in the Placita Anglo-Normannica of Dr. Bigelow. 1 The noble series of extant English judicial records does not begin until 1 194 (Mich. 6 Ric. I.) 2 Our first law treatise, Glanville, was written not before 1187. 3 Our existing law reports begin not earlier than two centuries and a quarter after the Conquest, in 1 292.* (a) During this earliest period there are many illustrations of the use of the inquisition in ordinary administration. The con- spicuous case is that of the compilation of Doomsday Book in 1085-6. This was accomplished by a commission, making inquiry throughout England, by sworn men of each neighborhood, re- sponsible and acquainted with the facts. Doomsday is a record of all sorts of details relating to local customs, and the possession, tenure, and taxable capacity of the land owners. " Questions of title to land and services, and disputes over the status of per- sons were of constant occurrence before the commissioners, and the results are briefly stated." 6 Incidentally much else came in, as where an inquest 6 in their answers relate the proceedings of a litigation in the popular court, and how, upon Ralph's failure to appear on a day fixed by the viscount, the men of the hundred had adjudged (diiadicaverant) the land to his adversary. The disputes and offers of proof before the Commissioners themselves are sometimes reported. 7 Of the use of the inquisition in judicature there is an instance, 1 Boston: Little, Brown, ft Co. 1879. "This volume [Preface, p. iii] is not a selec- tion of cases, but contains all, of a temporal nature, that are of any value in the known legal monuments of the period." 2 Rotuli Curiae Regis, i., introd. i-ii. 8 Glanvilla, Traclatusde Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliae, Lib. viii. c. 3. A fine is cited here as enrolled on the Monday next after the feast of Simon and Jude, in 33 H. II.; this feast was Oct. 28, 1187. I do not take account of the rather special treatise known as Dialogus de Scaccario, written not before 1176-7. Even while I am writing comes something newly discovered, — " what we may believe to be our oldest legal text-book" (Maitland, in Law Quart. Rev. viii. 75), viz., the " Quadrjpartitus, an English law book of 1114," edited by Dr. Liebermann (Halle, 1892).
- Y. B. 20 & 21 Edw. I.
6 Big. PI. Ang. Norm, xlix; Palg. Com. i. 271-3. " Not even an ox nor a cow, nor a swine was there left which was not set down in his records," says a Saxon chronicler quoted by Palgrave. 6 Ranulf v. Ralph, Big. PI. A. N. 307, citing Doomsday, i. 424. T Illustrations of this sort of thing, taken from Doomsday, may be seen in Big. PL Ang. Norm. pp. 37-61, and ib. 293-307.
