The Spirit of the Common Law

Sir, the law is as I say it is, and so it has been laid down even since the law began; and we have several set forms which are held as law, and so held and used for good reason, though we cannot at present remember that reason.

--Sir John Fortescue, C.J.
Y.B. 36 Hen. VI ff 25b-26 (1485)

Two curious facts about this snippet that I never noticed before. One, 1485 is also the date of the Battle of Bosworth Field, which finished off Richard III, and brought Henry Tudor the throne, effectively ending the Mediaeval and beginning the modern era. Two, Fortescue himself died in 1476. So either I have the date wrong, or this publication is posthumous.

Fortescue is also credited with originating the notion that it is better that twenty guilty man go free than that one innocent man be executed. So he had his better days.