The principle was directly decided in accordance with the ancient law in the famous case of Southcote v. Bennet. /8/ This was detinue of goods delivered to the defendant to [179] keep safely. The defendant confessed the delivery, and set up he was robbed of the goods by J.S. "And, after argument at the bar, Gawdy and Clench, ceteris absentibus, held that the plaintiff ought to recover, because it was not a special bailment; that the defendant accepted them to keep as his proper goods, and not otherwise; but it is a delivery, which chargeth him to keep them at his peril. And it is not any plea in a detinue to say that he was robbed by one such; for he hath his remedy over by trespass, or appeal, to have them again." The above from Croke's report implies, what Lord Coke expressly says, that "to be kept, and to be kept safe, is all one," and both reports agree that the obligation was founded on the delivery alone. Croke's report confirms the caution which Lord Coke adds to his report: "Note, reader, it is good policy for him who takes any goods to keep, to take them in special manner, scil. to keep them as he keeps his own goods,... or if they happen to be stolen or purloined, that he shall not be answerable for them; for he who accepted them ought to take them in such or the like manner, or otherwise he may be charged by his general acceptance." Down to this time, at least, it was clear law that, if a person accepted the possession of goods to keep for another even as a favor, and lost them by wrongful taking, wholly without his fault, he was bound to make good the loss, unless when he took possession he expressly stipulated against such a responsibility. The attempts of Lord Holt in Coggs v. Bernard, and of Sir William Jones in his book on Bailments, to show that Southcote v. Bennet was not sustained by authority, were futile, as any one who will Study the Year Books for himself may see. The same principle was laid down seven years before by Peryam, [180] C. B., in Drake v. Royman, /1/ and Southcote's Case was followed as a leading precedent without question for a hundred years. Thus the circle of analogies between the English and the early German law is complete. There is the same procedure for lost property, turning on the single question whether the plaintiff had lost possession against his will; the same principle that, if the person intrusted with the property parted with it to another, the owner could not recover it, but must get his indemnity from his bailee; the same inverted explanation, that the bailee could sue because he was answerable over, but the substance of the true doctrine in the rule that when he had no remedy he was not answerable; and, finally, the same absolute responsibility for loss, even when happening without fault on the part of the person intrusted. The last and most important of these principles is seen in force as late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We have now to follow its later fortunes.