Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/278

 264 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S extant in the pages of the annalist, but remain rather among the Responsa Prudentum than as materials for a code. Just, however, as the statute law of England begins with the reign of Henry III, so does the codification of the national canon law. . Archbishop Langton's Constitutions may be set first, but next In order, and even of greater authority, come the Constitutions of the legate Otho, which were passed in a national council of 1237. After these come Constitutions of the successive archbishops, especially Boni- face of Savoy and Peckham, which were drawn up in a very aggressive spirit ; Boniface taking advantage of Henry Ill's weakness to urge every claim that the English law had not yet cut down, and Peckham going beyond him in asserting the right of the Church against even the statutable enact- ments of the state. Between Boniface and Peckham in the year 1268 come the Constitutions of Othobon, which were confirmed by Peckham at Lambeth in 1281, and which, with those of Otho, were the first codified and glossed portions of the national church law. In the reign of Edward III, John of Ay ton, canon of Lincoln, an Oxford jurist it is said, collected the canons adopted since Langton's time and largely annotated the Constitutions of Otho and Othobon. Contemporaneously with this accumulation of national ma- terials, the Corpus Juris of the Church of Rome was increas- ing; Boniface VIII added the sixth book to the five of Gregory IX, and John XXII added the Clementines in 1318; and his own decisions, with those of the succeeding popes, were from time to time added as Extravagants un- systematised. The seventh book of the Decretals was drawn up under Sixtus V as late as 1588; so that practically it lies outside our comparative view. Of course very much of the spirit of both the sixth book and the Clementines found its way into England, but the statute law was in- creasing in vigour, the kings were increasing in vigilance, and after the pontificate of Clement V the hold of the papacy on the nation was relaxing. Occasionally we find an arch- bishop like Stratford using the papal authority and assert- ing high ecclesiastical claims against the king, but the age of the Statutes of Praemunire and Provisors was come, and