A comparatively impartial statement by a professed lawyer as to
what the defects and injustices in English legal procedure really were may
appropriately follow the Leveller demands. John Cook The Vindication
Of The Professors & Profession Of The Law, Feb. 6, 1645/6, E. 320 (17), is
itself a protest against the tendency of some men of the time to regard all
lawyers as rascals, but the book is moderately radical in its viewpoint.
Cook would gladly have seen the whole law of England brought into
accord with the Mosaic law--the law of God. His recommendations
are various; for one thing, the raising of the limit of a suit in forma pau-
peris, since it is a grievous matter that a poor man cannot sue for twenty
shillings without its costing him forty in fees. He objects to the abuse
of technical flaws in indictments, wishes the abolition of imprisonment
for debt, and of the abuses connected with the action for debt--an action
used by pettifoggers as a convenient device for casting a man into prison.
A man could be, and often was, imprisoned by one of these actions when
the bringer of the action had no proof at all of any debt owed by the
defendant. Cook wishes law proceedings to be in English; for he is
ashamed to think that a country man should be served with a subpoena
in Latin, when very likely he can find no one in five miles able to trans-
late it to him--a badge of the Norman conquest this. Cook urges Par-
liament to provide courts for the more remote counties of the kingdom;
he suggests that to prevent men from fraudulently incurring debts they
can never hope to pay, the Parliament should establish in every county
an office for the registry of deeds, leases, contracts, etc., so that for a
small fee every man may know how land is encumbered; thus men
will no longer be enabled to live beyond their estates, or to hold rich
mortgages and feign poverty.

Further, he recommends that, to bring about the desirable accord
between the law of England and the laws of God and reason, some grave,
judicious man well versed in Scripture and in the common law should
consider what changes would serve to bring the one into harmony with
the other.

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