justice asked Hubert de Burgh to excuse him from going on circuit with Pateshull on the ground that he wore out his colleagues by his incessant activity. Of his abilities as a lawyer, Bracton's appreciative citations speak eloquently. He appears to have gained his reputation as a lawyer, pure and simple. He died in 1229. The second great influence on Bracton's thinking was William Raleigh, also known as William de Raley, a native of Devon. He was a resident in and around Bratton Fleming in 1212, when Bracton was born there. Raleigh was a justice of the bench in 1228. In 1234 he pronounced reversal judgment of Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent's outlawry. Though he was not a justiciar, he was regarded as the chief among judges. In 1237 he was appointed treasurer of Exeter Cathedral. He was elected to the See of Winchester in 1238 and passed from legal history. His election to this position was violently opposed by the King who favoured William of Valence. In 1239 Raleigh was elected to the See of Norwich. In 1244 he was elected to the See of Winchester for a second time. He died in 1250. He had much to do with the passage of the Statute of Merton. Raleigh defended the refusal of the barons to change the law of bastardy and legitimation. He invented the writ Quare ejecit infra terminum and was influential in the writing of several other novel writs. It is from Bracton that we get the majority of the history of the law at this time. Bracton is thought to have had a notebook with 2000 cases from Pateshull and Raleigh. Raleigh granted lands to Bracton in Flemmings of Bratton who held it through his wife's family. Her name was Beaupre. Raleigh was Pateshull's clerk. Later, Bracton became Raleigh's clerk. Bracton: cosmopolitan outlook Bracton imbued the courts of his day with a broad, Continental or cosmopolitan outlook. The incorporation of Roman Law began with Ranulf de Glanvill 140 years before. This is demonstrated in Leges Henrici Primi (Laws of Henry I). There is some controversy about the true nature of Bracton's Romanism. Henry Maine regarded Bracton as a complete fraud, who tried to pass off sheer Romanism as legitimate English law. For this, in his view, Bracton should be completely dismissed as a figure of substance in the formation of English law. Frederic William