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Lord Nottingham's “Certain Measures”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2010
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References
1. “Example of a Treatise on Universal Justice or the Fountains of Equity, by Aphorisms” appended to Book 8 of De Augmentis, in Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L., and Heath, D. D., eds., The Works of Francis Bacon (London,1857–74; reprinted New York: Garrett, 1968)Google Scholar, 5: 88.
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5. See, for example, Friedland, M. L., “Prospective and Retrospective Judicial Lawmaking,” University of Toronto Law Journal 24 (1974):184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6. Yale, D. E. C., ed., Lord Nottingham's Chancery Cases, 2 vols. (London: Selden Society, 1957)Google Scholar, 1:xlv (hereafter Yale, Cases).
7. See, for example, Sir Richard Pepper Arden M.R. in Kemp v. Kemp (1795) 5 Ves. 849 at 858; John, Lord Campbell, , The Lives of the Chief Justices of England, 3rd ed. (London, 1874)Google Scholar, 2:203; Maitland, F. W., Equity: A Course of Lectures (revised by Brunyate, J.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936; reprinted 1969), 10Google Scholar; Keeton, G. W. and Sheridan, L. A., Equity (London: Pitman and Sons, 1969), 52Google Scholar; and Yale, D. E. C., “Finch, Heneage, first earl of Nottingham (1621–1682),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9433.
8. John, Lord Campbell, , Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, ed. Mallory, J. A. (Toronto: Carswell, 1876)Google Scholar, 4:224–25.
9. A History of English Law, 2nd ed. (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1937; reprinted 1966), 6:547.
10. McGhee, John, ed., Snell's Equity, 31st ed. (London: Thomson/Sweet and Maxwell, 2005), 8Google Scholar. Like Holdsworth, they say that he began the work of systematization. For other examples, see Meagher, R. P., Gummow, W. M. C., and Lehane, J. R. F., Equity: Doctrines and Remedies, 2nd ed. (Sydney: Butterworths, 1984)Google Scholar, para. 114 (characterizing him as one of the “great Lord Chancellors” involved in “the systematisation of equity”) and Edwards, Kirsten, Australian Essential Equity and Trusts (Sydney: Cavendish, 2000), 4Google Scholar (observing that Nottingham is “famous for forming equity into a coherent body of law”).
11. An Introduction to English Legal History, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths, 2002), 110. Baker's observation is cursory and ambiguous: although it suggests a terminus a quo, 1660, for this process, it does not specify a terminus ad quem. Holdsworth says that the doctrines of equity became “completely fixed” only at the end of the eighteenth century (History, 547). Moreover, significantly, as evidence for the phenomenon Baker quotes the statement by Nottingham that includes the epithet (“certain measures”) I use in my title (see note 14 below), although he does not mention Nottingham by name.
12. Letter to Lord Kames, in Yorke, Philip C., The Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (first published Cambridge University Press, 1913; reprinted New York: Octagon, 1977)Google Scholar, 2:554.
13. (1678), Yale, Cases, 2:639.
14. (1676), Yale, Cases, 1:371.
15. The Rule of Faith, 3rd ed. (London, 1688), 4, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:107809:5.
16. The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. David Ross (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 133.
17. Spenser: Poetical Works, ed. J. C. Smith and E. DeSelincourt (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), bk. 5, canto 1, vii, 1–4, 278. This perhaps resonates to Isaiah 28:17, “Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet,” which Thomas Watson for example sees as a description of God's equity (A Body of Practical Divinity (London, 1692), 50), noting that “the Plumb-Line of our Reason is too short to fathom the depth of God's Justice,” http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:59758:31.
19. Ibid., 79, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:8665:45. Although not applying it metaphorically to morals or law, Thomas Blount in defining “Lesbian Rule or Square” says that “the Lesbians were such perfect work-men, that they made Rules and Squares by their work, and not their work by the rule” (Glossographia, 5th ed. [London, 1681]), 373, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:45961:195.
20. Treatise of Equity, in The Second Part of Symboleography (London, 1627), fol. 175v., http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:20392:189.
21. Lloyd, David, State-Worthies, 2nd ed. (London, 1679), 54Google Scholar, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:59639:38.
22. The Antiquity & Original of the Court of Chancery, and Authority of the Lord Chancellor of England (London, 1654), 38, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:152381:23.
23. Six Learned and Godly Sermons (London, 1604), fol. 92r., http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:150375:94.
24. Prohibitions del Roy (1607), 12 Co. Rep. 63 at 64, 77 E.R. 1342 at 1343.
25. Pollack, F., ed., Table Talk of John Selden (London: Selden Society, 1927), 43Google Scholar.
26. “To the Reader,” in Epieikeia: A Dialogue on Equity in Three Parts, ed. D. E. C. Yale (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), 2–3.
27. The English Lawyer (London, 1631), 211–12, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:10306:110.
28. Yale, D. E. C., ed., Lord Nottingham's “Manual of Chancery Practice” and “Prolegomena of Chancery and Equity” (Cambridge, 1965; reprinted Holmes Beach, Fla.: W. W. Gaunt & Sons, 1986), 194Google Scholar (hereafter Prolegomena).
29. Negus v. Fettiplace (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:190.
30. Honywood v. Bennett (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:214.
32. Good Conscience, or, a Treatise Shewing the Nature, Meanes, Markes, Benefit, and Necessitie Thereof, 6th ed. (London, 1635), 48–49, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:17537:30.
33. See note 28 above.
34. “The Aristotelian Basis of English Law, 1450–1800,” New York University Law Review 56 (1981): 33.
35. Ibid., 48.
36. “Law and Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell,” American Journal of Legal History 30 (1986): 96.
37. Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 54.
38. Ibid.,174.
39. “Law and Geometry,” 97.
40. Ibid., 99.
41. Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London, 1667), 35, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:99266:26.
42. Francis Bacon (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 3.
43. The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630–1690 (The Hague: Martin Nijhoff, 1963), 15; Compare Shapiro, Probability, 67.
44. Shapiro, Probability, 5; Van Leeuwen, Problem of Certainty, 1.
45. Shapiro, Probability, 72.
46. Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1678), 5–9, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:64603:10.
47. Shapiro, Probability, 180. She opines that he would have invoked “the language of certainty quite naturally.”
48. Lives of the Chief Justices, 2:203.
49. Address to Serjeant Montague on his becoming Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, 12th April 1676, Yale, Cases, 1:320. Gamaliel was a highly reputed doctor of Jewish law (Acts 5:34); St. Paul learned the law “at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3).
50. Address to Serjeant Rainsford on his becoming Chief Justice, 12th April 1676, Yale, Cases, 1:318.
51. Ibid., 1:319.
52. Ibid. On the same day he reminded Serjeant Montague that the office of Chief Baron demands “a large comprehension of the whole science of the law” (Yale, Cases, 1:321).
53. The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale (London, 1700), 13 (hereafter, Burnet, Hale), http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:65547:12. See, generally, Raff, Murray, “Matthew Hale's Other Contribution: Science as Metaphor in the Development of Common Law Method,” Australian Journal of Law and Society 13 (1997): 73–117Google Scholar.
54. Burnet, Hale, 63–64, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:65547:37.
56. Sollom Emlyn, in the preface to Hale's Historia Placitorum Coronae, The History of the Pleas of the Crown (London, 1736), reproduces the “character” and says the author was “supposed to be the then earl of Nottingham” (vol. 1, vii, note h). Both Campbell, Lord Chancellors, 4:227, and Holdsworth, History, 6:547, repeat the attribution. Given Burnet's description of the legal eminence of his informant, and his reference to him as a “Noble person” (that is, a member of the nobility), as well as Nottingham's admiration for Hale, the attribution is entirely plausible. The first edition of Burnet's biography appeared in 1681, that is, before Nottingham's death; Nottingham would have been a natural source for Burnet to go to obtain a “character” of Hale. Burnet knew Nottingham personally: in the preface to his The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, The Second Part, 2nd ed. (London, 1683) he thanks Nottingham for supporting his efforts financially and for reading and making corrections to the manuscript (http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:65548:411).
57. As Nottingham reminds Serjeant Montague, telling him that an Exchequer judge must be not only “a master of the Law” but “a great judge in Equity” as well (Yale, Cases, 1:321).
59. Ibid.
60. Lord Chancellors, 227.
61. “Reflections by the Lrd. Cheife Justice Hale on Mr. Hobbes His Dialogue of the Law,” Harleian Ms. 711, ff. 418-39, published in Law Quarterly Review 37 (1921): 274–303.
62. Ibid., 286.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 288; my emphasis.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., 293.
73. Ibid., 294.
74. “Example of a Treatise,” 90.
75. Ibid., 94.
76. Ibid., 96.
77. Prolegomena, 189.
78. Yale, Cases, 2:646.
79. Ibid., 648.
80. Ibid., 647.
81. Ibid., 648.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid., 649.
85. Yale, Cases, 1:365.
86. Ibid.
87. (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:202. Compare the Prolegomena: “In suits in equity …, the Lord Chancellor must order his conscience after the rules and grounds of the laws of this realm” (200). Yale observes that Nottingham “deliberately and constantly” turned to the common law “to aid him in constructing rules of equity” (Cases, 1:lii).
88. See Bluck v. Crisp (1673/74), Yale, Cases, 1:35.
89. Yale, Cases, 1:202–5.
90. Ibid., 204.
91. (1680/81), Yale, Cases, 2:869.
92. (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:115.
93. Ibid.
94. (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:501.
95. Probability, 173.
96. (1676/77), Yale, Cases, 2:483.
97. Yale, Cases, 1:368.
98. Ibid., 371.
99. Ibid., 370.
100. Ibid.
101. (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:539.
102. Ibid.
103. Webb v. Burroughs (1675/76), Yale, Cases, 1:298. Compare Hatton v. Long (1673), Yale, Cases, 1:10, where he makes an order “which I thought equity,” but which required a party to “do equitably”; failing that, “currat lex.”
104. (1676), Yale, Cases, 1:443.
105. (1682), Yale, Cases, 2:931. There is something of an ambiguity here. Nottingham sees the discretion ostensibly given to the widow as “arbitrary.” What makes the exercise of this kind of discretion less arbitrary is the requirement that it be executed “with equity and good conscience,” and that the best rule, generally, is “equity is equality.” So, we have movement away from strict legal interpretation to discretion, but discretion governed by equity, and, in this case by a default rule. Compare Civil v. Rich (1679) 1Ch. Cas. 309 at 309, 22 E.R. 815 at 815, where he says, “I sit not here to make the Wills of Men, nor to interpret them farther than the Wills go.”
106. (1678), Yale, Cases, 2:665.
107. (1680), Yale, Cases, 2:821.
108. Cox v. Quantock (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:102.
109. Barkley v. Penn (1680/81), Yale, Cases, 2:863. Nottingham is specifically concerned that the court should not “suffer the mortgagee to be cozened.” See also Norcliffe v. Worsly (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:86, and Salsbury v. Bagott, Yale, Cases, 2:503.
110. Anonymous case (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:63. Compare Wyvell v. Beckwith (1676), Yale, Cases, 2:450–51.
111. Moor v. Hinton (1677/78), Yale, Cases, 2:619. Compare Burges v. Skinner (1673/74), Yale, Cases, 1:31, Smith v. Coriton (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:196, Bulstrode v. Baker (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:213, and Bateman v. Tidcomb (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:347.
112. Yale, Cases, 2:871.
113. Klinck, Dennis R., “Lord Nottingham and the ‘Conscience’ of Equity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006): 123–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Klinck, Dennis R., Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010)Google Scholar.
114. Yale, Cases, 2:505.
115. (1678), Yale, Cases, 2:655.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid.
118. Again, the word “levity” here does not have the prevalent modern meaning of “frivolity” but one probably closer to what its etymology suggests, that is, “the quality or fact of having comparatively little weight.” In this sense, it is again a word of measurement.
119. (1670) Mod. Rep. (1682) 300 at 307.
120. Ibid.
121. (London, 1693), sigs. A4r-A4v, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:29452:4.
122. Yale, Cases, 1:204.
123. Ibid.
124. Colston v. Gardner (1680), 2 Ch. Cas. 43 at 45, 22 E.R. 838 at 839.
125. (1682), 2 Ch. Cas. 87 at 93, 22 E.R. 859 at 862.
126. Ibid.
127. (1681/82), Yale, Cases, 2:914.
128. Jus Appellandi ad Regem Ipsum a Cancelaria (London, 1684), 121, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:36889:66.
129. See, for example, Nicholas Blomley, “Making Private Property: Enclosure, Common Right and the Work of Hedges,” Rural History 18 (2007): 1–21.
130. “The Fruites of Warre,” in The Pleasantest Works of George Gascoigne Esquyre (London, 1587), 118, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:173567:79. This passage has been explained as follows: “the enclosed lands were to be fenced with hedge and ditch and the lands in the open ‘mede’ marked off by stones of furrows” (Notes & Queries, 6th ser., 4 (1881), 424).
131. Blomley, “Making Private Property,” 12.
132. Practical Divinity, 86, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:59758:49. Watson in several places speaks of the (divine) law as hedge, so that, for example, “the sinner takes liberty to sin, he breaks God's Laws, like a Wild beast that breaks over the Hedge and leaps into forbidden Pasture” (34, http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:59758:22).
133. Bointon v. Sprignall (1676), Yale, Cases, 1:383.
134. (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:60–61.
135. Yale, Cases, 1:202.
136. (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:565.
137. (1676), Yale, Cases, 1:390.
138. (1682), Yale, Cases, 2:922.
139. Yale, Cases, 1:119.
140. Ibid., 115.
141. Ibid., 117.
142. Ibid., 120.
143. Ibid., 115. One is reminded of some of Lord Denning's—himself hardly a formalist—criticisms of the excessive subtlety of lawyers' distinctions, leading to an undermining of a more commonsensical kind of law (see, for example, Re Tuck's Settlement Trusts, [1978] Ch. 49 at 59–60).
144. Yale, Cases, 1:117.
145. Ibid., 118.
146. Ibid.
147. (1674), Yale, Cases, 1:72.
148. (1680), Yale, Cases, 2:832.
149. As we shall see shortly, he does not limit himself even to “legal” sources.
150. Yale, Cases, 2:484.
151. Ibid., 484n.
152. (1679/80), Yale, Cases, 2:763.
153. Prolegomena, 283.
154. Yale, Cases, 1:117. Compare Hide v. Seymour (1678), Yale, Cases, 2:709, a similar case, where he insists on a construction of the words of a will based not on literal “niceties” but on what will “stand with the good conscience of a dying father.”
155. (1674/75), Yale, Cases, 1:137. Compare 1 Eq. Cas. Abr. 141B (3), where he is reported to have said that “he would not let a man sin in his grave.”
156. Ibid.
157. Bromley v. Hamond (1680), Yale, Cases, 2:807.
158. (1680/81), Yale, Cases, 2:860.
159. (1675/76), Yale, Cases, 1:273.
160. (1675), Yale, Cases, 1:245.
161. See Stowbard v. Wingfield (1676), Yale, Cases, 1:343 (“an unjust and indeed an ungrateful suit”) and Rodd v. Ryer (1676), Yale, Cases, 2:468 (“the most ingrateful suit that could be”).
162. Farmer v. Marston, Yale, Cases, 2:665. See also Butler v. Harrison (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:550, where he upholds an agreement in respect of a remarriage after divorce, saying “all this was done in pity of such a marriage which some casuists hold lawful.”
163. Yale, Cases, 1:117. Here, Nottingham points out that this compassion is specifically a feature of “the reason and equity of the Common Law” itself in at least one species of case.
164. Coke v. Bishop (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:570.
165. Jevon v. Grant (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:541.
166. Earl of Feversham v. Watson, Yale, Cases, 2:643.
167. Gibson v. Kenvyn, Yale, Cases, 2:931.
168. (1677), Yale, Cases, 2:584.
169. Howard v. Duke of Norfolk (1682) 3 Ch. Cas. 40, 22 E.R. 955 at 962.
170. Ibid., 159. He repeats this sentiment at 962.
171. “A Preface Dedicatory” (to Lord Ellesmere), Le Primer Report des Cases & Matters en Ley resolues & adiudges en les Courts del Roy en Ireland (Dublin, 1615), sig. *8v., http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:7771:10.
173. Davies goes on to argue that, despite this general feature of law, “there is no art or Science that standeth vppon discourse of reason, that hath her Rules and Maximes so certaine and infallible … as the common lawe of England” (ibid.)
175. The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron Guilford (London, 1742), 198 (retrieved from Eighteenth Century Collections Online via Gale, http://find.galegroup.com/ecco, document cw3303613690,image 212).