Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/84

 foot.' They remark also that many good and gentle wits have perished 'chiefly for that most of them in their tender years, indifferent to receive both good and bad, were so rooted and seasoned, as it were, in barbarous authors, very enemies to good learning, that hard it was, yea almost impossible, to reduce them to goodness.'

The other paper contains a project for the king's College of Law submitted by the same three writers. This looks like an attempt to obtain a royally endowed school of English law, and it is curious to observe that, not English, but good French is to take the place of bad French. ' The inner barristers shall plead in Latine, and the other barristers reason in French; and either of them shall do what they can to banish the corruption of both tongues.' One learned in French is 'to teach the true pronuntiation of the French tongue.' One of excellent knowledge in the Latin and Greek tongues is to read 'some orator or book of rhetoric, or else some other author which treateth of the government of a commonwealth, openly to all the company.' Students of this college are to be sent abroad to accompany ambassadors, and two students are to act as historiographers of the realm. Nothing is said of the civil law. On the whole, this seems to be a conservative proposal emanating from English barristers for bettering the education of the common lawyer, and thus rendering unnecessary such a Reception as Pole had proposed. We do not know that it represents Henry's thoughts. It was 'a civil