Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/299

 8. STUBBS: THE CANON LAW 285 church law had not been neglected; for it had shared the benefit of the great historical and antiquarian revival of which Parker was the first leader, to which Spelman belonged, and which reached its climax in Selden and Prjnne. Both of these eminent writers studied canon law from antagonistic grounds: Selden regarded it as a philosopher ardent for liberty ; Prynne as an enthusiast, who had his own persecu- tion to avenge and the thesis of royal prerogative to defend with all the zeal and learning of a convert. Selden was a real jurist; Prynne an indefatigable searcher of records. But, when at the Restoration the removal of the incubus of the High Commission, and the pohtical education which the Caroline divines had gone through, enabled them to restore the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction with some hope of honest and successful issue, the canonists and civilians showed that life was still in them. The old black-letter Lyndwood was taken down from the shelf, rebound, and annotated. Dr. Sharrock in 1664 abridged the Provincial for the use of students, and in 1679 the Oxford edition, which rapidly displaced the black-letter, was published with all Lyndwood's commentaries and Ayton's work on the Con- stitutions. The study of the civil law needed no revival; it had been kept up by the antiquaries and admiralty in the worst times ; and, in the Universities, the faculty fellowships secured at least a languid succession of law degrees. The D. C. L. of Oxford too had achieved the dignity which now belongs to the honorary degrees at Commemoration; and in 1649, at what Antony Wood calls the Fairfaxian Creation, both Fairfax and Cromwell were made doctors of the civil law. According to Wood, in 1659 Nicolas Staughton, of Exeter College, was admitted doctor both of civil and canon law ; and it is not impossible that there were other attempts to revive the canon law doctorate as an adjunct to the degree in civil law. Cambridge had always retained the shadow of the double degree, for the Leges or LL. to which she admits her doctors are a possible survival of the ' Utrumque Jus ' of the old University system ; and in 1669, Richard Pearson, brother of Bishop Pearson the commentator on the Creed, claimed to be admitted in distinct terms to both faculties.