ONLY a hundred years ago the question whether or not there had been coroners in Roman Britain could still be seriously discussed, for two pieces of evidence had created a widespread belief that they had existed long before the Conquest. The Mirror of Justices, a thirteenth-century treatise, credits king Alfred with the appointment of coroners and sheriffs in every county, and a rhyming charter, purporting to have been granted by Athelstan to Beverley Minster, restricts the holding of inquests upon dead bodies within its liberty to its own bailiffs, specifically excluding any ‘other coroner’. Later legal writers, especially Coke, strengthened and prolonged the authority of The Mirror of Justices: they unquestioningly accepted the section on the coroner and embodied it in their works. Maitland, however, has brilliantly exposed the wilful mendacity of its author. The rhyming charter is an obvious forgery; the earliest extant version of it has been attributed on palaeographical and linguistic grounds to the reign of Edward II, when it was probably composed.
Judges as Legislators: Not Whether But How