Bracton's Note - Book. Edited by F. W. Maitland. Vol. I.: Apparatus.
Vols. II. and III.: Text. (C. J. Clay and Sons.)— Professor Maitland has made in these volumes a most valuable contribution to the study of English law. The sub-title of his work is, "A Collection of Cases decided in the King's Courts during the Reign of Henry IH., annotated by a Lawyer of that time, seemingly by Henry of Bratton." It seems that in 1884 Professor Paul Vinogradoff found in the British Museum a manuscript which he believed to be Bracton's "Note-Book," and, of course, closely connected with that great lawyer's work on law. Professor Maitland has weighed the evidence for this belief, and has come to the conclusion that it is correct. In his first volume he states at length the reasons which have made him think so. We have also a short sketch of Bracton's career. Henry of Bratton, or Bra,cton, was a priest. His name occurs in 1245 as a "justice in eyre " on circuit in the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, and Derby. For more than twenty years afterwards, he continued to take assizes in the Western Counties. He was never, Professor Maitland thinks, a Justice of the King's Bench, though from time to time he held plcicita &pram ipso rege. In 1264 he became Arch- deacon of Barnstaple, and later on in the same year, Chancellor of Exeter Cathedral. His death seems to have occurred four years later. The book itself is of too technical a kind to be discussed in these columns ; of its value there can be no question. The University of Cambridge must be congratulated on securing for its professoriate so learned a lawyer.
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