Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/204

 190 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S the Scotch sense), a project for the reformation of the Inns of Court, which happily were not rich enough to deserve dissolution,*^ also perhaps a project for a civil code as well as the better known project for a code ecclesiastical. In Edward VI's day our Regius and German Professor of Di- vinity, Dr. Martin Butzer, had heard, so it seems, that such a scheme had been taken in hand, and he moved in circles that were well informed. He urged the young Josiah to go for- ward in the good work; he denounced the barbarism of English law and (to use Bentham's word) its incognoscibil- ity.*® The new ecclesiastical code, as is generally known, "See the two papers that are printed by Waterhous, Fortescutus Bestitutus, 1663, pp. 539, 543. In one of these Thomas Denton, Nicholas Bacon and Robert Cary are answering an inquiry addressed to them by Henry VIII touching the plan of legal education pursued in the Inns of Court. In this there are some phrases that tell of the revival of learning. The writers thank Almighty God for giving them a king " endued and adorned himself with all kindes and sortes of good learn- ing as well divine as prophane" and one who " purposeth to set forward and as it were to revive the study and perfect knowledge thereof [t. e. of good learning], of long time detested and almost trodden under 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 ambassa- dors, 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 law college " that Somerset wished to establish at Cambridge by a fusion of Trinity Hall and Clare. (See MuUinger, Hist. Univ. Camb., vol. ii., pp. 134-137.) 1577, p. 148) : " Passim enim queri bonos viros audio, leges regni huius decorum [corr. de rerum] proprietatibus et commutationibus, de succes- sionibus in bonis atque aliis huius generis civilibus contractibus et com- merciis, esse perobscuras atque implicatas: adebque etiam lingua per- scriptas quadam obsoleta ut a nemine wqueant intelligi, qui non et earn
 * Bucerus, De regno Christi, lib. ii., cap. 56 (Scripta Anglica, Basil.