The Laws Of The Crusaders In Cyprus.

THE LAWS OF THE CRUSADERS IN CYPRUS .

A LECTURE on this subject , founded by the merchants of London in honour of John Ingrain Travers , was delivered at the London Institution , Finsbury Circus , by Sir Trai'ers Twiss , AVIIO introduced it by sketching the history of the island from its colonisation at a A'ery early period by Phoenician settlers from Tyre clown to the Third Crusade , during ii'hich our own Richard I . wrested it from tbe

Byzantinessubsequentltransfering-, y it to Guy , the founder of the Lusignan dynast )' . There was , the lecturer said , a manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris unique of its kind and . never yet published , which contained the code of laws under which the Greek inhabitants of Cyprns were living shortly before Richard ' s conquest . It was a small quarto written in the 13 th century , aud began with Pope Alexander IV . ' s famous Cypriot Constitution , establishing the supremacy of the Latin

bishops in the island over those of the Greek rite . The date of this Bull was 1260 , and it remained in force as long as the Franks ruled the island . Next came some verses on the relative duties of judge and advocate , after which followed 19 chapters of law in Greek , the 17 th and 18 th containing provisions on maritime law identical with those of the Basilica , or Imperial Byzantine Code , and thus carrying us back to the times anterior to Richard ancl Guy cle

Lusignan . Under Guy the nobles and the commons had each their own system of laws , ivhich ivere termed "Assises , " the history of which laws was singularly illustrative of the vitality of a legal system based on the principle of trial by one ' s peers . The origin of these laAvs was traced back to the First Crusade . On the election of Godfrey cle Bouillon in 1099 to the throne of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem , his first care was to draw up a body of laws for the government of his subjects . These consisted of two very different bodies of men—namely , an organized body of barons and knights , with their armed

retainers ; ancl a heterogeneous body of footmen , " la gent a pie , " who folloived in the Avake of the fighting men ancl owned no military chief . The former had left their counterpart behind them in Western Europe ; the latter were a novel development of industrial life , merchants and mariners , handicraftsmen ancl cultivators of the soil , who had quitted their homes from a desire to improve their condition of life , ancl ivere not disposed to acquiesce in a system of political dependence such as they had now outgrown in their new career of

perilous adventure . The result ivas that two distinct systems of jurisprudence Avere compiled ; hence two systems of judicature , and two books of its principles , entitled respectively the "Book of the Assises of the Hi gh Court " ancl the " Book of the Assises of the Court of the Burghers of Commons . " These books were deposited ivith much solemnit y in a chest within the Church of the Holy Sepulchrewhence they were styled " Lettres dc

, Scpulcre . " Before concluding with a few words on the present administration of Cyprus , it was remarked that we were taught by the preservation of the Assises of Jerusalem to the present clay the same lesson which Ave learn from the preservation of Bracton ' s " Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England . " The A'alue of both ivorks consists in the fact that they are compilations not of laws , but of jurisprudence . What may have been the

precise contents of the original ' Lettres de Sepulcre , " whether they were as meagre as the Great Charters of our Angevin kings , must remain matter of conjecture . What gave them value ivas the spirit in which they were administered , ancl the procedure by which what Avas good and just ancl equitable in them was implanted in the memory of each generation , and became dear to thorn as a legacy of ancestral usages .