Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/192

 178 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S to find or to fashion links that will in some direct and obvi- ous manner connect the Reformation and the Reception. In one popular version of the tale protestantism finds a congenial ally in the individualism and capitalism of the pagan Digest.^* In truth I take it that the story is complex. Many currents and cross-currents were flowing in that turbid age. It so happens that in this country we can connect with the heresi- archal name of Wyclif a proposal for the introduction of English law, as a substitute for Roman law, into the schools of Oxford and Cambridge.^^ On the other hand, the desire not see any hint that knowledge of Roman law will help a man at the bar of the ordinary English courts. For more of the attempt to put new life into the study of Roman law at Cambridge, see Mullinger, op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 132 ff. Though Somerset desired to see a great civil law college which should be a nursery for diplomatists, the Edwardian or Protestant Reformation of the church was in one way very unfavourable to the study of the civil law. Bishoprics and deaneries were thenceforth reserved for divines, and thus what had been the prizes of his profession were placed beyond the jurist's reach. Dr. Nicholas Wotton (d. 1567), dean of Canterbury and York, may be regarded as one of the last specimens of an expiring race. Men who were not professionally learned, men like Sir Francis Bryan (d. 1550) and Sir Thomas Wyatt (d. 1542), had begun to compete with the doctors for diplomatic missions and appointments. Also the chancellorship of the realm had come within the ambition of the common lawyer, and (though Bishop Goodrich may be one instance to the con- trary) the policy which would commit the great seal to the hands of a prelate was the policy which would resist or reverse ecclesiastical innova- tions. Even the mastership of the rolls, which had been held by doctors, of Padua and Bologna, fell to the common lawyers. Thomas Hannibal, master of the rolls (1523-1527), must, one would think, have been an Italian, as were the king's Latin secretaries Andrea Ammonio and Pietro Vannes. "See Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. i., pp. 471-501, where the cry of "heathenry!" is raised against the civil law. Janssen's attempt to praise the canon law as radically Germanic while blaming the " absolutistic " tendencies of the civil law seems strange. Was not the canon law, with its pope, qui omnia iura habet in scrinio pectoris sui, absolutistic enough? '^ Wyclif, Tractatus de officio regis, Wyclif Society, 1887, pp. 56, 193, 237, 250: "Leges regni Anglie excellunt leges imperiales cum sint pauce respectu earum, quia supra pauca principia relinquunt residuum epikerie [ = 'e7rie£Keta] sapientum. . . . Non credo quod plus viget in Romana civilitate subtilitas racionis sive iusticia quam in civilitate Anglicana. . . . Non pocius est homo clericus sive philosophus in quan- tum est doctor civilitatis Romane quam in quantum est iusticiarius iuris Anglicani. . . . Unde videtur quod si rex Anglie non permitteret canonistas vel civilistas ad hoc sustentari de suis elemosinis vel patri- monio crucifixi ut studeant tales leges. . . non dubium quin clerus foret utilior sibi et ad ecclesiasticam promocionem humilior ex noticia civilitatis proprie quam ex noticia civilitatis duplicis aliene." By "the patrimony of the crucified" Wyclif means ecclesiastical revenues, which