Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/469

 ACCOUNT OF BOOKS.

455

already fcverely felt the effed of many Norman innovations, con- tinued wedded to the ufe of the common law. King Stephen im- mediately publilhed a proclama- tion, forbidding the ftudy of the laws, then newly imported from Italy; which was treated by the monks as a piece of impiety, and though it might prevent the intro- duftion of the civil law proceis in- to our courts of jullice, yet did not hinder the clergy from reading and teaching it in their own fchools and monalteries.

From this time the nation feeiii* to have been divided into two parties; the bifh<'ps and clergy, many of them foreigners, who applied themfelves wholly to the ftudy of the civil and canon laws, which now came to be infeoarably interwoven with each other; and the nobility and laity, who adhered with equal pertinacity to the old common law; both of them re- ciprocallyjealous of what they were unacqudinted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the oppoiite iyftem that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the fpleen wi'h which the raonaltic writers fpeak of our municipal laws upon all occafions; and, on the other, from the firm temper which the nobility fhewed at the famous parliament of Menon; when the prelates endeavoured to procure an aft to declare all bailards legitimate in cafe the parents in- termarried at any time afterwards; alledging this onlyreafon, becaufe holy church (that is, the canon law) declared fuch children legi- timate : but, * all the earls and


 * barons (fays the parliament roll)


 * jyith cue voice aofwered, that


 * they would not change the laws


 * of England, which have hitherto

we find the fame jealoufy prevail- ing above a century aftff wards, when the nobility declared with a kind of prophetic fpirit, • that the
 * been ufed and approved.' And


 * realm of England hath never


 * been unto this hour, neither by


 * the confent of our lord the king


 * and the lords of parliament Ihall


 * it ever be, ruled or gove-ned

temper between the clergy and laity many more inftances might be given.
 * by the civil liw.' And of this

While things were in this fitua- tion, the clergy finding it inipof- lible to root out tn*- it unicipa' law, began to withdraw the-nfelv^a by degrees from the t<.\nroral coirts; and to tnat end, very early in the rei-^n of King Henry the third, epilcopal conliirutioris werf. pub- lifheJ, forbidding all ecclc-'i'.itics to appear as advocates in fofo feculari; nor did they long con- tinue to aft as judges there, not caring to take tiie oath of office which was then found neceflary to be adminiHered, that they (hould in all things determine according to the law and cullom of this realm; though they fiill kept prfleffion of the high office of chancellor, an office then of little juridical power; and afterwards, as its bufinefs in- creafed by degree*, they modelled the procefs of the court at their own difcretion.

But wherever they retired, and wherever their authority ex- tended, they carried with them the fame zeal to introduce the rules of the civil, in exclufjon of the municipal law. Tnis appears in a particular manner from th« fpiritual courts of al) denomina-

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