“Primo explicuit socnam — he shed his life blood for the sublime truths of sac and soc.” So, thirty years later, Henry Adams sardonically described the struggles of that pioneer Harvard seminar which issued in September 1876 in the volume Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law. The Adams of 1876 called it “a really satisfactory piece of work,” and it has a secure niche in any bibliography of the subject. The Adams of 1905 derided it as the fruit of wasted energy. The clue to the meaning of the Middle Ages was for him rather to be found among the pillars of Chartres than in the barren fields of law books.

The history of local government in France and England might be compared to the course of two rivers which rise near together and at first flow in almost parallel channels, until some apparently trifling natural obstacle diverts their streams, and they flow farther and farther apart, ultimately reaching two different oceans. The Mediterranean and the North Sea are not farther apart than are the two systems in the eighteenth century: on the one hand, the despotism of Louis XV, controlling from one centre the thirty-three généralités and intendances; on the other, the parliamentary monarchy of George III, controlled by the sovereign representatives of the shires and boroughs. Nor does the contrast end there; the French system was jettisoned in 1789 by the National Assembly, when they remade the map of France and created the departments of today, while the reformers of 1832 in England left the shires intact, so that the county members and county councils of today represent units of local government that were already in existence a thousand years ago.

The office of Marshal of the Eyre is the subject of at least two interesting cases reported in the Year Books of Edward II. As no account of this Marshalsy appears to exist it seemed worth while to bring together the following particulars, not only for their own sake, but as illustrating the history of a medieval serjeanty. These particulars fall under three heads: the origin and evolution of the office, its tenure and descent, and the functions and activities it involved.