United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But Glanvill also seems to admit the use of witness to establish debts. /1/ As the transaction witnesses were formerly available for this purpose, I see no reason to doubt that they still were, and that he is speaking of them here also. /2/ Moreover, for a long time after Henry II., whenever an action was brought for a debt of which there was no written evidence, the plaintiff, when asked what he had to show for it, always answered "good suit," and tendered his witnesses, who were sometimes examined by the court. /3/ I think it is not straining the evidence to infer that the "good suit" of the later reports was the descendant of the Saxon transaction witnesses, as it has been shown that Glanvill's secta was. /4/
Doubtless both questions and answers seem quibbles to the present-day reader, but the force of Glanvill's replies from the point of view of his contemporaries must not be underestimated. He was indeed the first defender of witchcraft who in any reasoned manner tried to clear up the problems proposed by the opposition. His answers were without question the best that could be given.
If this were true, what would become of all those bulwarks of religion furnished by the wonders of witchcraft? It looks very much as if Glanvill had let an inconsistency creep into his philosophy. It was two years after Glanvill's first venture that Meric Casaubon issued his work entitled Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine.
Perhaps the reader will recall the incident of the hunted rabbit that vanished behind a bush and was transformed into a panting woman, no other than the accused Julian Cox. This tale must indeed have strained Glanvill's utmost capacity of belief. Yet he rose bravely to the occasion.
But the intellectual energy of Henry the Second's time is shown even more remarkably in the mass of general literature which lies behind these distinctively historical sources, in the treatises of John of Salisbury, the voluminous works of Giraldus Cambrensis, the "Trifles" and satires of Walter Map, Glanvill's treatise on Law, Richard Fitz-Neal's "Dialogue on the Exchequer," to which we owe our knowledge of Henry's financial system, the romances of Gaimar and of Wace, the poem of the San Graal.
The result so far is, that the only action of contract in Glanvill's time was debt, that the only debts recovered without writing were those which have been described, and that the only one of these for which there was not quid pro quo ceased to be recoverable in that way by the reign of Edward III.
I have said, Glanvill's predecessors probably regarded warranty as an obligation incident to a conveyance, rather than as a contract. But when it became usual to insert the undertaking to warrant in a deed or charter of feoffment, it lost something of its former isolation as a duty standing by itself, and admitted of being generalized.
This had more or less taken place in Glanvill's time, and then all that a party had to do was to produce the writing and satisfy the court by inspection that the impression on the wax fitted his opponent's seal. /1/ The oath of the secta could always be successfully met by wager of law, /2/ that is, by a counter oath the part of the defendant, with the same or double the number of fellow-swearers produced by the plaintiff.
It could no longer be examined before the court. /1/ It was a mere survival, and the transaction witness had ceased to be an institution. Hence, the necessity of tendering the witness oath did not fix the limit of debt upon simple contract except by tradition, and it is not surprising to find that the action was slightly extended by analogy from its scope in Glanvill's time.
Men like George Morland have lived for a time with Gypsies. Matthew Arnold elaborated Glanvill's tale in a sweet Oxford strain. All these things delight us. Some day we shall be pleased even with the Gypsy's carrion- eating and thieving, "those habits of the Gypsy, shocking to the moralist and sanitarian, and disgusting to the person of delicate stomach," which please Mr.
Word Of The Day