Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/33

 English law and (to use Bentham's word) its incognoscibility. The new ecclesiastical code, as is generally known, was never enacted; but we know equally well that the draft is in print. Its admired Latinity is ascribed to Prof. Smith's immediate successor, Dr Walter Haddon. I take it that now-a-days few English clergymen wish that they were living—or should I not say dying?—under Dr Haddon's pretty phrases. Codification was in the air. Both in France and in Germany the cry for a new Justinian was being raised, and perhaps we may say that only because a new Justinian was not forthcoming, men endeavoured to make the best that they could of the old. How bad that best would be Francis Hotman foretold.

And then we see that in 1535, the year in which More was done to death, the Year Books come to an end: in other words, the great stream of law reports that has been flowing for near two centuries and a half, ever since the days of Edward I, becomes discontinuous and