Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/190

 176 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S law — by the foundation of professorships at Oxford and Cambridge. We observe also that his choice of a man to fill the chair at Cambridge fell on one who was eminently qual- ified to represent in his own person that triad of the three R's — Renaissance, Reformation and Reception. We know Professor Thomas Smith as a humanist, an elegant scholar with advanced opinions about the pronunciation of Greek. We know the Reverend Thomas Smith as a decided, if cau- tious, protestant whose doings are of some interest to those who study the changeful history of ecclesiastical affairs. Then we know Dr. Thomas Smith as a doctor In law of the university of Padua, for with praiseworthy zeal when he was appointed professor at Cambridge he journeyed to the foun- tain-head for his Roman law and his legal degree.^ ^ Also he visited those French universities whence a new jurispru- dence was beginning to spread. He returned to speak to us in two inaugural lectures of this new jurisprudence: to speak with enthusiasm of Alciatus and Zaslus : *^ to speak hopefully of the future that lay before this conquering sci- ence — the future that lay before it in an England fortu- nately ruled by a pious, wise, learned and munificent Prince. Then in Edward VI's day Thomas Smith as a Master of Re- quests was doing justice in a court whose procedure was de- scribed as being " altogether according to the process of sum- mary causes in the civil law " and at that moment this Court of Requests and other courts with a like procedure seemed to have time, reason and popularity upon their slde.*'^ Alto- "See Mr. Pollard's life of Smith in Diet. Nat. Biog. Some important facts, especially about his ordination, were revealed by J. G. Nichols, in Archaeologia, xxxviii. 98-127. "Smith says that when he first became a member of the senate at Cambridge he bought the Digest and Code and certain works of Alciatus, Zasius and Ferrarius. (See Mullinger, History of the University of Cambridge, vol. ii., p. 130.) Ferrarius is, I suppose, Arnaud Ferrier, the master of Cujas. Mr. Mullinger (p. 126) suggests that the Spaniard Ludovico Vives while resident at Oxford may have propagated dissat- isfaction with the traditional teaching of Roman law. "Select Cases in, the Court of Requests (Selden Society), 1898, p, cxxiii. Mr. Leadam's introduction to this volume contains a great deal of new and valuable matter concerning this important court. The title of the " masters of requests " seems certainly to come hither from France. Just at this time there was a good deal of borrowing in these * matters: witness the title of the "secretaries of state," which, it is said, spreads outwards from Spain to make the tour of the world.