CENTRAL COURTS 1 69 



mately the same form as in the printed editions; only one 

 more report was found ^ and not a single one of Fitz- 

 herbert's additional ten cases. His sources are therefore 

 still to be sought.^ 



Fortunately these 44 reports are fairly intelligible even 

 in their present versions and touch on nearly all the im- 

 portant points of law arising from the enforcement of the 

 statutes, but need of course to be corroborated and inter- 

 preted by the records. In turning to the Plea Rolls, my first 

 object was to discover the reported cases ; ^ while looking^ 

 for these, I took brief notes on all actions on the statutes 

 or involving the statutes (whether reported or not) that 

 had reached at least the stage of an attachment,* and in 

 some rolls I made a count of all such actions that were 

 merely begun. Since my search was necessarily rapid, it 



' App., 419-420. 



-Professor Maitland was interested in the problem of finding the 

 sources used by Fitzherbert, and was good enough to aid me in my 

 search in Cambridge. 



•'Unless possessed of technical legal knowledge, one scarcely dares 

 venture into the realm of Plea Rolls, without a special apology to Mr. 

 Pike, so earnestly has he sought to deter the layman from such an 

 attempt. See his "Action at Law in the Reign of Edw. Ill: the Re- 

 port and the Record," in Harvard Lazv Review, vii, 267-268. Both he 

 and Professor Maitland, however, have done far too much to show the 

 value of Plea Rolls to make it possible to leave them untouched. 



With only limited time at my disposal, the main difficulty in finding 

 the records of the Year Book cases lay in the fact that the mistakes as 

 to year and term in the reports dealing with the statutes exceeded even 

 the usual number of such errors; also that there was often no clue as to 

 court, and that in some of the reports, notably in those given only by 

 Fitzherbert, too few details of the actions appeared to render identifica- 

 tion certain. The form of the actions on the statutes, however, made 

 them comparatively easy to pick out, even in a rapid glance at a mem- 

 brane; moreover, I was fortunate in having much patient help and 

 many useful suggestions from Mr. G. J. Turner, whose knowledge of 

 the Plea Rolls is unrivalled. 



■* Including of course all that reached further stages. 



