PREFACE This collection has been made by the kindness of a friend, Mr. Harold J. Laski, and I owe him thanks for gathering these little fragments of my fleece that I have left upon the hedges of life. They are printed as they appeared and I have been unable to do more than run my eye over them, but I am glad to see them put together in a book, as they offer some views of law and life that I have not expressed elsewhere so fully. The place of original publication is given at the head of each paper, and I thank the several publishers for their assent to the reprint. A later generation has carried on the work that I began nearly half a century ago, and it is a great pleasure to an old warrior who cannot expect to bear arms much longer, that the brilliant young soldiers still give him a place in their councils of war. June 15, 1920 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES EARLY ENGLISH EQUITY * I. USES At the end of the reign of Henry V. the Court of Chancery was one of the established courts of the realm. I think we may assume that it had already borrowed the procedure of the Canon law, which had been developed into a perfected system at the beginning of the thirteenth century, at about the same time that the Chancellor became the most important member of the King's Council. It had the "Examination and oath of the parties according to the form of the civil law and the law of Holy Church in subversion of the common law." It had the subpoena, which also it did not invent, and it had a form of decree requiring personal obedience." 2 * Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 1, p. 162. (1885.) 1 Rot. Parl. 84 (3 Hen. V. pt. 2. 46, No. 23). 2 See writ addressed to sheriff, Rot. Claus. 16 Hen. III. m. 2 dorso in Royal Letters, Hen. III (Rolls ed.), 523. Proc. Privy Council (Nicholas) passim. Stat. 20 Ed. III, c. 5. The penalty was usually money, but might be life and limb; 1 Proc. Priv. Counc. (21 R. II. A.D. 1397). The citation of Rot. Parl. 14 Ed. III, in 1 Roll. Abr. 372, which misleads Spence (1 Eq. 338n.) and earlier and later writers, should be 14 Ed. IV. (6 Rot. Parl. 143), as pointed out already by Blackstone, 3 Comm. 52 n. We also find the writ Quibusdam certis de causis, a writ in the form of the subpoena except that it omitted the penalty; Palgrave, King's Council, pp. 131, 132, note X; Scaldewell v. Stormesworth, 1 Cal. Ch. 5. • See Audeley v. Audeley, Rot. Claus. 40 Ed. III, "sur peine de sys |