THE GREEN BAG
214
THE
WILL
OF
AN
ENGLISH
OF MODERATE
GENTLEMAN
FORTUNE
By Albert Martin Kales THE form of will for a typical combi nation of circumstances is no longer a matter of individual choice. It has be come the subject of an evolutionary choice. Law has been roughly characterized as the expression of the persistent will of those who govern. Certainly the Common or NonLegislative Law derives its great force from the fact that it is the result of an evolution ary process. It is not the subject of one mind or one time. It is never ready made. The rule which sprang into life a century ago had its origin in influences which began a century or more before that. The rule which appears as something new to-day reaches back into the past for its reason and its inspiration. The rules which exist and have existed as the fundamentals of our law derive force and sanctity from the fact that they are the product of many times and many great minds. They represent very largely only that which has survived the scrutiny of generations of trained masters. Sometimes a rule survives too long, but in the day of its strength it has, like the rules of moral and religious codes of conduct, the elements which command admiration and obedience. The typical testator is a little apt to for get that the best testamentary disposition for him to make has been settled, like the rules of law, by generations of experience and experiment on the part of trained spe cialists. The results of this experience and experiment, as well as the evolution which it has produced, are to be found in the form books of the English conveyancers of every generation since the reign of Charles the Second. He, perhaps, does not realize that the plan prescribed for him in the 7th vol ume of the last edition of Bythewood or in the 4th volume of a recent edition of Davidson's Precedents is the crowning
effort of an evolution which dates back to the latter part of the seventeenth century. In fact the founder of that school of con veyancers which has produced the form that I am about to speak of in detail was no other than Sir Orlando Bridgeman, afterwards Lord Keeper of the Great Seal from 1667 to 1672. He is called the father of modern conveyancing. "A collection of his pre cedents made by his clerk, Thomas Page Johnson,1 is fortunately preserved. Mr. Johnson states in his address to the reader that these precedents were framed and advised by the late Lord Keeper Bridgeman during the time of his practice, when the unhappy circumstances wherein the king dom stood, afforded no other means of safety to persons of his loyalty and constancy than a strict retirement from all public affairs, and he continues, that, 'betaking himself to a sedentary kind of life in his chamber, he became the great oracle not only of his fellow-sufferers, but of the whole nation in matters of law, his very enemies not think ing their estates secure without his advice.' " ' So great, indeed, was his reputation that in 1683 Lord Chancellor Nottingham, in sus taining the validity of certain provisions of the Duke of Norfolk's family settlement, called attention to the fact that it was drawn by Sir Orlando Bridgeman — impliedly inti mating that this indicated a strong prob ability that what had been done would stand.3 Since the time of Bridgeman there' have been a succession of conveyancers, con veyancing counsel, and chancellors who have added to, or pointed the way for, or insisted upon improvements in the form of 1 Bridgeman, Sir O., Precedents, (Eng.) 168a17251 History of Settlements of Real Estate, 1 Jurid. Soc. Pap. 45, 54. a Duke of Norfolk's Case, 3 Ch. Cas. 1.
