TO MY 



LOVING FRIENDS AND FELLOWS, 



READERS, ANCIENTS, UTTER-BARRISTERS, AND STUDENTS 

 OF GRAY S INN. 



I DO not hold the law of England in so mean an 

 account, but that which other laws are held worthy of 

 should be due likewise to our laws, as no less worthy 

 for our state. Therefore, when I found that, not only 

 in the ancient times, but now at this day, in France, 

 Italy, and other nations, the speeches, and, as they 

 term them, pleadings, which have been made in judi 

 cial cases, where the cases were mighty and famous, 

 have been set down by those that made them, and 

 published ; so that not only a Cicero, a Demosthenes, 

 or an ^Eschines hath set forth his orations, as well in 

 the judicial as deliberative, but a Marrian and a 

 Pavier have done the like by their pleadings ; I know 

 no reason why the same should not be brought in use 

 by the professors of our law, for their arguments in 

 principal cases. And this I think the more necessary, 

 because the compendious form of reporting resolu 

 tions, with the substance of the reasons lately used 

 by Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of the King s 

 Bench, doth not delineate or trace out to the young 

 practisers of law a method and form of argument for 

 them to imitate. It is true, I could have wished some 

 abler person had begun; but it is a kind of order 



