Yearbooks of King Edward III.: Year XVIII. Edited and Translated
by Luke Owen Pike. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, and others. 10s.)—Mr. Pike furnishes a learned introduction in which he describes various sets of legal records. It will be discreet not to attempt any analysis or epitome of his remarks. We may quote, however, a notable statement to which he would wish, we are sure, that as wide a circulation as possible should be given, that in 1667 King Charles II. declared in a warrant addressed to Sir Orlando Bridgman, C.J.C.P., that the Plea Rolls of his Court "for want of Calendars unto them are utterly useless to our good subjects," and that now in 1904 the said Rolls remain without calendars. A little further on his subject gives him occasion to sketch the rise of an eminent lawyer of King Edward nt.'s reign, Robert Paruynge, otherwise Peruinke, other- wise Periwinkle, a name of the "Plantagenet" order. Paruynge in 1325 was so poor that he was glad, for an annuity of £1 6s. 8d. and a robe (suitable for a squire), to be standing counsel, so to speak, to one John de Haverynton. The same year he became Knight of the Shire for Cumberland. In 1329 he was a Serjeant-at-Law. He was then making money, for he was buying land. Then he became King's Serjeant, and went on buying lands, manors, and advowsons. Before 1340 the King had granted him £66 13s. 4d. per annum for life. In that year he became a Justice of the Common Pleas and Treasurer—there was a regular upset of officials and Judges, who were accused of "selling the laws as if they had been oxen and cows "--and in the next Chancellor. The next rear the King gave him the "lawn of Braithwaite and the covert of Middles- cleugh " in Inglewood Forest,—for he was sportsman as well as lawyer. In 1343 he died. His widow sued the grantor of the annuity for arrears: Whether she recovered them or not we do not know ; but as the grantee could not have performed his part of the covenant after he was raised to the Bench, it seems to a non-legal mind as if the claim was not equitable. The cases recorded number a hundred and one. Ecclesiastical persons or corporations figure frequently in them.
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