In 1817, he turned his mind to the great problem of legal education, and wrote his interesting and elaborate essay on the Growth and Expansion of the Common Law, as a review of Prof. David Hoffman's Course of Legal Study, then just published. And so in this year 1817-the year of the founding of the Harvard Law School-Story's life came in touch with the great subject in connection with which his name is forever noted-the teaching of the law. In 1818, he was elected an Overseer of Harvard College. From that year, his life may be best described in connection with the history of the Law School itself.

CHAPTER XIV.

ISAAC ROYALL AND ISAAC Parker.

To trace legal education at Harvard University to its earliest source, one must go back to the year 1781, two years after the birth of Story, one year after Marshall was admitted to the Bar, and the year in which Kent began to study law with Egbert Benson.

In this year 1781, at Kensington in England, there died a Loyalist refugee from Massachusetts, one Isaac Royall.

To him belongs the credit of being the founder of the Harvard Law School.

He had been born at Antigua in the West Indies, in 1719; his father, a merchant of great wealth, having emigrated from Boston. In 1738, the family returned to New England, where Isaac Royall fixed his residence in that part of Charlestown now known as Medford. He became a Justice of the Peace in 1753, and a Brigadier General of the Province in 1761. For sixteen years he was chairman of the Board of Selectmen of Medford. He represented the town in the Legislature from 1743 to 1752, regularly returning his salary to the town treasury. In 1752 he was elected a member of the Governor's Council, which honorable office he held until 1774, travelling back and forth from Boston in his coach, the only one in his town. In Medford his father had built the fine old mansion which still stands in that city-a house noted in colonial days for its elegance and richness of furnishing, and built on the model of an English nobleman's house in Antigua.

Isaac Royall appears to have been a man of amiable and mild manners, popular with his neighbors, though a member of what might be termed the aristocracy of the Province. "He loved to give and loved to speak of it and loved the reputation of it," says the historian of Medford. (1) "Hospitality was almost a passion with him. No house in the colony was more open to friends; no gentleman gave better dinners or drank costlier wines. As a

(1) History of Medford, by Charles Brooks (1886).

master, he was kind to his slaves; charitable to the poor and friendly to everybody. He kept a daily journal, minutely descriptive of every visitor, topic and incident, and even described what slippers he wore, how much tar water he drank, and when he went to bed."

Two of his daughters married with distinction, George Erving, and Sir William Pepperell, both of whom became Loyalist refugees. Though declining appointment by the King as a Mandamus Councillor in 1774, in deference to the excited prejudices of the colonists against this usurpation of power by the King, his tendencies were all in favor of a peaceable settlement of the troubles between England and the Colonies. Timid of nature, fearful of the outcome of a Revolution, on the night before the battle of Lexington, without settling his affairs in Medford or taking any of his property with him, he hurried to Boston, and from there sailed for Halifax, and thence to England. His flight appears to have been due to his fears-not that he loved the Colony less, but that he feared England the more; and even at Halifax he wrote home that he hoped to return soon. At first, his popularity saved him from the fate of his sons-in-law, whose property was at once confiscated under the "Conspirator's Act." (1)

Finally his long delay in returning caused even his friends to turn against him. A hearing was held by the Medford Committee of Inspection at which various persons testified as to his Tory sentiments; and as a result, on May 25, 1778, the Selectmen certified to James Winthrop, Judge of Probate that, "Isaac Royall has absented himself for a term of upwards of three months leaving estates behind him to the value of more than

(1) It is interesting to note the extreme measures taken by the Colony against the Loyalists, and also the class of men who composed them. Nearly 200 Loyalists were banished by name by the Government of Massachusetts, of whom more than 60 were graduates of Harvard.

Of the five judges of the Superior Court, in 1775, only one (William Cushing) took the American side.

The three statutes passed against the Loyalists were the Act of Sept., 1778, to prevent return of certain persons therein named and others who have left this State or either of the U. S. and joined the enemies thereof; the Act of April 30, 1779, to confiscate the estates of certain notorious conspirators against the government and liberties of the late Province now State of Massachusetts Bay; the Act of Sept. 30, 1779, to confiscate the estates of certain persons commonly called absentees.