3. The third, that the grievousness of the penalty in many statutes be mitigated, though the ordinance stand.

4. The last is, the reducing of concurrent statutes, heaped one upon an other, to one clear and uniform law. Towards this there hath been already, upon my motion, and your majesty's direction, a great deal of good pains taken; my lord Hobart, myself, serjeant Finch, Mr. Heneage Finch, Mr. Noye, Mr. Hackwell, and others, whose labours being of a great bulk, it is not fit now to trouble your majesty with any further particularity therein; only by this you may perceive the work is already advanced: but because this part of the work, which concerneth the statute laws, must of necessity come to parliament, and the houses will best like that which themselves guide, and the persons that themselves employ, the way were to imitate the precedent of the commissioners for the canon laws in 27 Hen. VIII. and Edw. VI. and the commissioners for the union of the two realms, primo of your majesty, and so to have the commissioners named by both houses; but not with a precedent power to conclude, but only to prepare and propound to parliament.

This is the best way, I conceive, to accomplish this excellent work, of honour to your majesty's times, and of good to all times; which I submit to your majesty's better judgment.

AN OFFER TO KING JAMES

OF

A DIGEST

TO BE MADE OF THE

LAWS OF ENGLAND.

Most Excellent Sovereign,

AMONGST the degrees and acts of sovereign, or rather heroical honour, the first or second is the person and merit of a law-giver. Princes that govern well are fathers of the people: but if a father breed his son well, or allow him well while he liveth, but leave him nothing at his death, whereby both he and his children, and his children's children, may be the better, surely the care and piety of a father is not in him complete. So kings, if they make a portion of an age happy by their good government, yet if they do not make testaments, as God Almighty doth, whereby a perpetuity of good may descend to their country, they are but mortal and transitory benefactors. Domitian, a few days before he died, dreamed that a golden head did rise upon the nape of his neck which was truly performed in the golden age that followed his times. for five successions. But kings, by giving their subjects good laws, may, if they will, in their own time, join and graft this golden head upon their own necks after their death. Nay, they may make Nabuchodonozor's image of monarchy golden from head to foot. And if any of the meaner sort of politics, that are sighted only to see the worst of things, think, that laws are but cobwebs, and that good princes will do well without them, and bad will not stand much upon them; the discourse is neither good nor wise. For certain it is, that good laws are some bridle to bad princes, and

as a very wall about government. And if tyrants sometimes make a breach into them, yet they mollify even tyranny itself, as Solon's laws did the tyranny of Pisistratus: and then commonly they get up again, upon the first advantage of better times. Other means to perpetuate the memory and merits of sovereign princes are inferior to this. Buildings of temples, tombs, palaces, theatres, and the like, are honourable things, and look big upon posterity: but Constantine the great gave the name well to those works, when he used to call Trajan, that was a great builder, Parietaria, wall-flower, because his name was upon so many walls so if that be the matter, that a king would turn wall-flower, or pellitory of the wall, with cost, he may. Adrian's vein was better, for his mind was to wrestle a fall with time; and being a great progressor through all the Roman empire, whenever he found any decays of bridges, or highways, or cuts of rivers and sewers, or walls, or banks, or the like, he gave substantial order for their repair with the better. He gave also multitudes of charters and liberties for the comfort of corporations and companies in decay: so that his bounty did strive with the ruins of time. But yet this, though it were an excellent disposition, went but in effect to the cases and shells of a commonwealth. It was nothing to virtue or vice. A bad man might indifferently take the benefit and ease of his ways and bridges, as well as a good; and bad people might purchase good charters. Surely the better works of perpetuity in princes are those, that wash the insidé of the cup; such as are foundations of colleges and lectures for learning and education of youth; likewise foundations and institutions of orders and fraternities, for nobleness, enterprise, and obedience, and the like. But yet these also are but like plantations of orchards and gardens, in plots and spots of ground here and there; they do not till over the whole kingdom, and make it fruitful, as doth the establishing of good laws and ordinances; which makes a whole nation to be as a well-ordered college or foundation.

This kind of work, in the memory of times, is rare

enough to shew it excellent: and yet not so rare, as to make it suspected for impossible, inconvenient, or unsafe. Moses, that gave laws to the Hebrews, because he was the scribe of God himself, is fitter to be named for honour's sake to other lawgivers, than to be numbered or ranked amongst them. Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon, are examples for themes of grammar scholars. For ancient personages, and characters now-a-days use to wax children again; though that parable of Pindarus be true, the best thing is water: for common and trivial things are many times the best, and rather despised upon pride, because they are vulgar, than upon cause or use. Certain it is, that the laws of those three lawgivers had great prerogatives. The first of fame, because they were the pattern amongst the Grecians: the second of lasting, for they continued longest without alteration: the third, of a spirit of reviver, to be often oppressed, and often restored.

Amongst the seven kings of Rome four were lawgivers: for it is most true, that a discourser of Italy saith; "there was never state so well swaddled in the "infancy, as the Roman was by the virtue of their "first kings; which was a principal cause of the "wonderful growth of that state in after-times.”

The decemvirs laws were laws upon laws, not the original, for they grafted laws of Græcia upon the Roman stock of laws and customs: but such was their success, as the twelve tables which they compiled were the main body of the laws which framed and wielded the great body of that estate. These lasted a long time, with some supplementals and the Pretorian edicts in albo; which were, in respect of laws, as writing tables in respect of brass; the one to be put in and out, as the other is permanent. Lucius Cornelius Sylla reformed the laws of Rome: for that man had three singularities, which never tyrant had but he; that he was a lawgiver, that he took part with the nobility, and that he turned private man, not upon fear, but upon confidence.

Cæsar long after desired to imitate him only in the

66

And

first, for otherwise he relied upon new men; and for resigning his power Seneca describeth him right; Cæsar gladium cito condidit, nunquam posuit, Cæsar soon sheathed his sword, but never put it off. himself took it upon him, saying in scorn of Sylla's resignation; Sylla nescivit literas, dictare non potuit, Sylla knew no letters, he could not dictate." But for the part of a lawgiver, Cicero giveth him the attribute; Cæsar, si ab eo quæreretur, quid egisset in toga; leges se respondisset multas et præclaras tulisse; "If you "had asked Cæsar what he did in the gown, he would "have answered, that he made many excellent laws." His nephew Augustus did tread the same steps, but with deeper print, because of his long reign in peace; whereof one of the poets of the time saith,

Pace data terris, animum ad civilia vertit

Jura suum; legesque tulit justissimus auctor. From that time there was such a race of wit and authority, between the commentaries and decisions of the lawyers, and the edicts of the emperors, as both law and lawyers were out of breath. Whereupon Justinian in the end recompiled both, and made a body of laws such as might be wielded, which himself calleth gloriously, and yet not above truth, the edifice or structure of a sacred temple of justice, built indeed out of the former ruins of books, as materials, and some novel constitutions of his own.

In Athens they had Serviri, as Eschines observeth, which were standing commissioners, who did watch to discern what laws waxed improper for the times, and what new law did in any branch cross a former law, and so ex officio propounded their repeal.

King Edgar collected the laws of this kingdom, and gave them the strength of a faggot bound, which formerly were dispersed; which was more glory to him, than his sailing about this island with a potent fleet: for that was, as the Scripture saith, via navis in mari, "the way of a ship in the sea;" it vanished, but this lasteth. Alphonso the wise, the ninth of that name, king of Castile, compiled the digest of the laws of