The chief justiciary was usually, even in those times, when, from the circumstance of the king and the great officers of his household acting as judges, we may conclude that a special education was not considered absolutely necessary to fit a man for the judicial office, a person who had given particular attention to the study of juris prudence. As the representative of the judicial portion of the grand seneschafe power, his authority extended over every court in the dom. For as to what Blackstone says of the court of the marahalsea, that is, the court of the lord steward of the king's household, having never been subject to the jurisdiction of the chief justiciary and no writ of error lying from it to the king's bench, it merely amounts to this, that the court of the lord steward was in fact originally tho oourt of the lord high steward, and in that court either of his representatives, the chief ,justiciary or the lord steward, might preside: The chief justiciary not only presided in the king's court and in the exchequer, but he was originally (or rather when the lord high steward fell into abeyance, partly from dread of his power and partly from tho impossibility of securing an hereditary succession of the qualities necessary to fulfil his great and numerous duties), by virtue of his office, regent of the kingdom during the king's absence; • and at those times writs ran in his name, and were tested by him. And in this
light the chief justiciary is regarded as having been the greatest subject in England. One of the most distinguished men who held this high office was Ranulph de Glanville, who is usually regarded as the author of the Tractatus de Legibus et Consuctudinibus Anglin,' the oldest book extant on English law.
The last who held the office and bore the title of Capitalis Justitia rifts Anglice was Philip Basset : and the first who held the office of Capitalis Juatitiarizia ad placita contra liege tencnda, that is, chief justice of the king's bench, was Robert de Bruis, appointed in the fifty-second year of Henry III. Sir Edward Coke was fond of indulging his vanity by bestowing tho same title, "Chief Justice of England,' upon himself and on the Grand Justiciary, the mighty Capitalis Jembriarsas A eglier ; which was noticed by Lon' Chancellor Ellesmere In his address to Sir Henry Montague, Coke's successor, upon his being mesa in shied jostles, in these words :—" hotted of containing himself within the words of the writ to be the chief justice, as the king called ad *cite axon *obis teerends.'