Excerpt from The General Eyre: Lectures Delivered in the University of London at the Request of the Faculty of Laws

This course of lectures on the General Eyre follows on very naturally after the previous course on the Year Books, for the Year Books form the chief source of what we know about the eyres. It is in them alone that we can see the eyres actually alive and at work. The old legal writers, Bracton and the rest, have, indeed, coldly pictured for us something of their form and told us something of their functions, but it was left to the writers of the Year Books to breathe the living spirit into this lifeless form. And here, not only for myself but also for those from whom I have learned almost all I know about the eyres, the writers of these manuscripts of long ago, I would thank the University of London for the opportunity it gave me in these lectures of recovering from the oblivion of centuries and bringing back to light all the lore of the eyres which these ancients wrote down for the instruction of the lawyers and law-students of their own day, and which is of great value now to students of many other branches of learning.

If I should seem in these lectures to have over-stressed somewhat the financial side of the eyres and under-stated their judicial side, it must be remembered that I had only a narrowly limited time wherein to deal with a very wide subject. It was necessary, therefore, to insist more upon those matters which were especially characteristic of the eyres than upon those which were not.

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