Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/199

 6. M AIT LAND: THE RENAISSANCE 185 were much abler men than those who were sitting in the courts of the common law. With the one exception of Anthony Fitzherbert, the judges of Henry's reign are not prominent in our legal history, and we have Httle reason for attributing deep knowledge of any sort of law to such chancellors as Audley, Wriothesley and Rich. I doubt our common lawyers easily accommodated themselves to ecclesiastical changes. Some years after Elizabeth's accession the number of barris- ters who were known to the government as " papists " was surprisingly large and it included the great Plowden.^* But we must go back to our main theme. A Reception there was not to be, nor dare I say that a Reception was what our Regius Professor or his royal patron desired. As to Smith himself, it is fairly evident that some time afterwards, when he had resigned his chair and was Elizabeth's ambassador at the French court, he was well con- tent to contrast the public law of England with that of " France, Italy, Spain, Germany and all other countries which " to use his words " do follow the civil law of the Romans compiled by Justinian into his Pandects and Code." ^^ The little treatise on the Commonwealth of England which "See the remarkable paper printed in Calendar of Inner Temple Records, vol. i., p. 470; also Mr. Inderwick's preface pp. 1 ff. In 1570 Lincoln's Inn had not been exacting the oath of supremacy: Black Book, vol. i., pp. 369-372. See also the lives of Edmund Plowden, William Rastell and Anthony Browne (the judge) in Diet. Nat. Biog.: and for Browne see also Spanish Calendar, 1558-67, pp. 369, 640. ''Smith, Commonwealth of England, ed. 1601, p. 147: "I haue de- clared summarily as it were in a chart or map, or as Aristotle termeth it 'us 'ev T&irif} the forme and maner of gouernment of England, and the policy thereof, and set before your eyes the principall points wherin it doth differ from the policy or gouernment at this time vsed in France, Italy, Spaine, Germanic, and all other Countries, which doe follow the ciuill law of the Romaines, compiled by lustinian into his pandects and code: not in that sort as Plato made his commonwealth, or Xeno- phon his kingdome of Persia, nor as Sir Thomas More his Vtopia, beeing fained commonwealths, such as neuer was nor neuer shall be, vaine imaginations, phantasies of Philosophers to occupie the time, and to exercise their wits: but so as England standeth, & is gouerned at this day the xxviij. of March, Anno 1565, in the vij. yeare of the raigne and administration thereof by the most vertuous & noble Queene Eliza- beth, daughter to King Henry the eight, and in the one and fiftieth yeare of mine age, when I was Ambassadour for her Maiestie, in the Court of Fraunce, the Scepter whereof at that time the noble Prince and of great hope Charles Maximilian did holde, hauing then raigned foure yeares."