Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/334

 House of Lords that their position was intolerable and their dignity a mere mockery, that the moral discipline of clergy and people was entirely broken down; no act for rehabilitating them was got through parliament; the dominant interests were opposed to it. The injunctions sent to the Universities prescribed some renewal of studies; the poor canonists of course were left out in the cold, although not treated as if they were illegal or irregular: the civilians were authorised to read the Institutes, and the D.C.L., when he had reached that dignity, was exhorted to devote himself more zealously to the study of the king's laws, both temporal and ecclesiastical. And work was to be found for him: bills were introduced to lodge ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the hands of students of the Universities, who were admitted by the archbishop. By these, however, all special privileges of the advocates were endangered and the bills dropped after passing most stages: four bills on this point were before the parliament of 1550. But again the revision of the canons was dragging behind. The king's power of nominating revisers was asserted by an act of 1550 to last for three years, and an abortive attempt was made in the session of 1552 to renew or enlarge i ; but whether it was that Cranmer found it impossible to obtain skilled assistants, or that the division of parties prevented a joint effort, it was not until near the end of the reign that the project was carried on: in 1551 and 1552 Edward issued two commissions of thirty- two, composed of equal numbers of bishops, divines, civilians, and common lawyers; the number thirty-two was reduced to eight; practically the work was done by Peter Martyr, the Oxford Professor of Divinity, under Cranmer's eye, and the result was the compilation known as the Reformatio Legum; a curious congeries of old and new material which really pleased no party; showing too much respect for antiquity and divine ordinance to please the Puritan, and too little to satisfy the men who had guided the Reformation under Henry VIII and those who were to do so under Elizabeth.

The legislation and policy of Mary were directed to uproot