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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Cancelli, the diminutive of cancer, means primarily, a lattice or grill, and so secondarily, an enclosure bounded by a barrier of that kind, and thirdly, the duties or office carried on in such an enclosure. Cancellarius naturally means a person associated with cancelli.
2 According to Lewis and Short's dictionary cancer a crab, and cancer a lattice, are separate words derived from roots which have similar forms but different meanings, the one ‘hard,’ the other ‘twist.’
3 Cancellare probably acquired the meaning to cancel from the practice of drawing criss-cross lines over the words to be annulled. Pliny in his Natural History, VIII, 10Google Scholar, described the patterned hide of the elephant as cancellata cutis.
4 Pauly-Wissowa, , Realencyclopœdie.Google Scholar
5 The word cancellarius is used in the sense of doorkeeper by the 4th century historian Flavius Vopiscus, in his life of the emperor Carinus (r. 284–5).Google Scholar
6 Sons of Theodosius I (d. 395).
7 Justinian, 's Code, I, 51, 3.Google Scholar
8 Diocletian, (r. 284–305)Google Scholar divided the empire into 13 dioceses, one of which was Italy, which included what is now Switzerland and part of what is now Austria. Each diocese was divided into a varying number of provinces. Fletcher, C. R. L., The Making of Western Europe (1912), p. 35.Google Scholar
9 Code of Theodosius, I, 34, 3.Google Scholar
10 His family, of Syrian origin, was settled at Scyllacium (Squillace) in Brutii, the ‘toe’ of Italy. His father, the elder Cassiodorus, was an important official under Odoacer, and praefectus praetorio under Theodoric. The younger Cassiodorus founded at least one monastery, collected manuscripts, and instructed his monks to copy them. He sketched out the system on which medieval education was afterwards based. Fletcher, C. R. L., op. cit., p. 103Google Scholar; article in the Encyclopœdia Britannica.
11 Athalaric died in 534, and Amalasuntha was murdered in 535. Gibbon, , Decline, and Fall of the Roman Empire, Bury's edn., IV, 303.Google Scholar
12 The collection of Cassiodorus' letters is known as the Variae, of which there are a great many editions. The modern one is that by Mommsen, in Vol 12 of the series Auctores Antiquissimi, part of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
A condensed translation was published in 1886 by Thomas Hodgkin, author of Italy and her Invaders.
13 As Hodgkin remarks in a comment in Letters, XI, 6.
14 Book II, Letter 6.
15 Book XII, Letter 1.
16 The last sentence means, I think, ‘For one of the proper duties of the office which we entrust to you is to release injured persons from imprisonment in which they have been unjustly confined.’
17 The name ‘Merovingian’ is taken from Merovech, king of the Franks, Salian457–481Google Scholar, father of Childeric I, and grandfather of Clovis, . Enc. Brit.Google Scholar
18 Gibbon, , op. cit., IV, 301.Google Scholar
19 Ker, W. P., The Dark Ages, 117.Google Scholar
Boëthius stands in history in a relation to Theodoric similar to that of Sir Thomas More to our Henry VIII, in that he was the close friend of his master and was judicially executed by him. Boëthius wrote his De consolatione philosophiae while in prison in Pavia awaiting execution. The story is told by Hodgkin in his Theodoric the Goth, in the ‘Heroes of the Nations’ series.
20 Stubbs, , Const. Hist., I, 352.Google Scholar The referendarius had the custody of the annulus regius, the royal signet ring, as did the later cancellarii. Ducange, , Glossarium, Vol. I, S. V. annulus.Google Scholar
See also Esmein, , Histoire de droit francais, 8th edn., 65.Google Scholar
There was in the late Roman Empire an official bearing the title referendarius. He was the confidential legal secretary to the emperor for the purpose of appeals reserved for the latter's personal consideration. See references in Pauly-Wissowa, , RealencyclopœdieGoogle Scholar; also Hodgkin, , Theodoric the Goth, 268.Google Scholar
21 Glossarium, S. V. cancellarius.
22 His ancestors had been hereditary Mayors of the Palace, wielding the real power. He deposed Childeric III, the last of the Merovingian puppet kings.
23 His Anglo-Saxon name was Winfrith.
24 ‘Chapel, capella, was originally the name given to the places where the cappa (cloak) of St. Martin of Tours was preserved with other treasures, and chaplains were the guardians of these relics.’ Seeliger, G. in Camb. Med. Hist., II, 662.Google Scholar
25 They are the following. The relationship of each to Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, is stated in brackets. Lothair, I (r. 840–'55Google Scholar, son), Lothair, II (r. '55–69, gs)Google Scholar, Charles, the Bald, (r. '69–77, son)Google Scholar, Louis, the Stammerer, (r. '77–79Google Scholar, gs), Louis, III (r. '79–82, ggs)Google Scholar, Carloman, (r. '82–84, ggs).Google Scholar
26 The whole passage is in cap. XVI of the De ordine palatii; Migne, , Patrologia Latina, Vol. CXXV, p. 999.Google Scholar
27 Norman Institutions, 1918, pp. 52–3.Google Scholar
28 Anglo-Saxon England, publ. 1943.Google Scholar
29 Haskins the following references to passages giving information about the chancery, Anglo-Saxon—Davis, , Regesta Willelmi, pp. xi–xvGoogle Scholar; Hall, Hubert, Studies in English Official Historical Documents, pp. 163 ff.Google Scholar
30 English Historical Review, XI, 731–2.Google Scholar
31 MissHarmer, F. E., Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XII, 10 1938, 5–6.Google Scholar
32 The words scacci, chess-men, and scaccarium, chess-board, are derived from the Persian Shah. The finance committee of the Curia Regis was called scaccarium because it sat at a table which was covered with a cloth squared so as to have some resemblance to a chess-board. For the system of reckoning was an adaptation of the abacus method of working sums which had recently come into vogue in Germany and France at the schools of Liége and Laon. Corbett, W. J. in Camb. Medieval Hist., V, 533.Google Scholar
33 Corbett, W. J. in Camb. Med. Hist., V, 533–4Google Scholar
34 See DrWilkinson, B., The Chancery under Edward III, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar He cites Delisle, 's Recueil des Actes de Henri II, Paris, 1919.Google Scholar There is a bibliography of the literature of the early history of the Chancery in Handbook of British Chronology, p. 65.Google Scholar
35 P. & M. I, 121; Vinogradoff, , Roman Law in Medieval Europe, 100.Google Scholar
36 Maitland wrote of the Tractatus de Legibus Angliae, commonly known as Glanvil:— ‘We should not be surprised if it were the work of Glanvil's kinsman and secretary, Hubert Walter,’ P. & M. I, 164. This statement expressed in the form of a guess must not be magnified into an opinion.
37 P. & M. I, 204.
38 Fourth Institute, 79, quoted by Campbell, , I, 212.Google Scholar
38a Until recently the accepted version of this Chancellor's name was Parning.
39 The History of the Register of Original Writs, Harvard Law Review, 10 15, 1889Google Scholar, reprinted in Collected Papers, II, 110.Google Scholar
40 See Winfield, , Chief Sources, pp. 321–324Google Scholar; H.E.L. V, 266–274.Google Scholar An anonymous serjeant-at-law wrote a replication to Doctor and Student.
41 Cavendish, George (1500–1561)Google Scholar who was Wolsey's usher and wrote his life, not published till 1641. See p. 283. There is a modern biography of Wolsey by A. F. Pollard.
42 There is an excellent modern life of Sir Thomas More, by Chambers, R. W., published in 1935.Google Scholar
43 He had been Keeper of the Seal from May 20, 1532.
44 Ultimately it was another lawyer, Henry Brougham, in due course Lord Chancellor, who had a large part in the foundation of the University of London.
45 In early times there had often been a Chancellor and a Keeper of the Great Seal at the same time. Campbell, , II, 220.Google Scholar
46 In practice he is generally the Leader of the Government in the House of Lords.
47 Lives, 5th ed. I, 15.Google Scholar
48 The male lines of descent from Coke and Ellesmere became extinct in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively.
In the case of both families the husband of a female descendant assumed the family name. The descent of the present Earl of Leicester (family name Coke) and of the present Earl of Ellesmere (family name Egerton) from Sir Edward and Sir Thomas respectively is, therefore, through a female.
49 I owe this statement to Professor Broad's Bacon tercentenary lecture, 1926, p. 63. Professor Broad points out that Bacon was incompetent as an actual experimenter and also in mathematics. Upon the question how far Bacon affected scientific development he writes, p. 62: ‘So far as I can see, the actual course which science has taken, even if it has been in accord with Bacon's principles and has led to the results which he desired and anticipated, has been influenced little if at all by his writings. I suspect that the popularity of the opposite view is due to the magnificent advertisement which Bacon received from D'Alembert and the French Encyclopædists who found it convenient to march into battle under his ensign.’
50 See Holdsworth, 's appreciation in Some Makers of English Law, 105–109Google Scholar, and in H.E.L. V, 246–250.Google Scholar
There are two modern popular accounts of Bacon, 's career, Francis BaconGoogle Scholar, by Sturt, Mary, 1932Google Scholar, and Bacon, by Williams, Charles, 1933.Google Scholar The classic authority is Spedding, James's Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, in 7 volumes, 1861–1874.Google Scholar
51 Williams had. secured the favour of Buckingham in 1620 by overcoming the scruples of Lady Catherine Manners and her father, the Earl of Rutland, in regard to Buckingham's proposal of marriage.
52 Spence, , The Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, Vol. I (1846), pp. 402–405.Google Scholar
53 Bulstrode Whitelocke, who was a nephew of Edward Bulstrode, the author of the law reports of that name, was born in (1605, and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1626. In 1633, when the four Inns of Court jointly produced a masque before the King and Queen, he and his life-long friend, Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, represented the Middle Temple on the committee.