Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/17

 intact that Coke could promulgate this prodigious sentence and challenge the whole world to contradict it? I have not the power to tell and you to-day have not the time to hear that story as it should be told. A brief outline of what might be said is all that will be possible and more than will be tolerable.

Robert Rede died in January, 1519. Let us remember for a moment where we stand at that date. The Emperor Maximilian also was dying. Henry VIII was reigning in England, Francis I in France, Charles I in Spain, Leo X at Rome. But come we to jurisprudence. Is it beneath the historic muse to notice that young Mr More, the judge's son, had lately lectured at Lincoln's Inn? Perhaps so. At all events for a while we will speak of more resonant exploits. We could hardly (so I learn at second-hand) fix a better date than that of Rede's death for the second new birth of Roman law. More's friend Erasmus had turned his back on England and was by this time in correspondence with two