Henry de Bracton - Bracton: Cosmopolitan Outlook

Bracton: Cosmopolitan Outlook

Bracton imbued the courts of his day with a broad, Continental or cosmopolitan outlook. The incorporation of Roman Law began with Ranulf de Glanvill 140 years before. This is demonstrated in Leges Henrici Primi (Laws of Henry I). There is some controversy about the true nature of Bracton's Romanism. Henry Maine regarded Bracton as a complete fraud, who tried to pass off sheer Romanism as legitimate English law. For this, in his view, Bracton should be completely dismissed as a figure of substance in the formation of English law. Frederic William Maitland held the opposite view, positing that Bracton had no real knowledge of Roman law, and the portion which he did proclaim was incomplete and shallow. These were of the opinion that most, if not all the Romanism of Bracton was derived directly from Azo of Bologna, written before 1211. It has proven to be difficult to pinpoint the exact nature of Romanism in Bracton.

When England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, it came under the influence of the most progressive and best governed system in Europe. It also brought a connection with the entire intellectual life of the Continent that had been absent in the Anglo-Saxon days. Foreigners came to England to study. English youth attended European universities. The only English Pope in history, Pope Adrian IV was elected in 1154. This can be attributed to Norman influence. On the Continent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was a renaissance in all learning, especially in legal concepts and writing. In Europe, Irnerius, the Four Doctors and Accursius revived the study of civil law. These established the school of the Glossators (writers of a "gloss" or short description of the case). Gratian systematized canon law. The Lombard Libri Feudorum and the French Beaumanoir reduced to some sort of order the customary feudal law of Europe. Ranulf de Glanvill and Bracton did this same thing for England, following the spirit of the Continent.

Bracton was influenced by an early twelfth-century lawbook entitled Leges Edwardi Confessoris. It is a collection that purportedly recorded the laws and customs current in the time of Edward the Confessor at the behest of his successor William the Conqueror.

William reorganized the land structure in a piecemeal fashion, following the reduction of resistance in various parts of England. His major lords were granted new titles of the land. But the old Saxon legal structure was left largely intact, including the traditional sheriff (shire reeve) and courts of shire and hundred. Maitland is of the opinion that the law of William I and his successors was biased in favor of all things West Saxon (Wessex) and the Church, while eschewing and denigrating all things Danelaw. Bracton freely intermixes the old Saxon terms such as sac (sake), soc (soke), toll and term, infangthef, utfangthef, thegn, dreng, sochemannus, hide, geld, hundred, wapentake, bote, wite and wer with Norman French terms such as baro, comes, vicecomes, vavassor, villanus, relief, homage, feudum manerium.