Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/38

22 laws will probably be more generally known, we may hope that the method of tudying them will oon revert to it’s antient coure, and the foundations at leat of that cience will be laid in the two univerities; without being excluively confined to the chanel which it fell into at the times I have been jut decribing.

, being then entirely abandoned by the clergy, a few tragglers excepted, the tudy and practice of it devolved of coure into the hands of laymen; who entertained upon their parts a mot hearty averion to the civil law, and made no cruple to profes their contempt, nay even their ignorance of it, in the mot public manner. But till, as the ballance of learning was greatly on the ide of the clergy, and as the common law was no longer taught, as formerly, in any part of the kingdom, it mut have been ubjected to many inconveniences, and perhaps would have been gradually lot and overrun by the civil, (a upicion well jutified from the frequent trancripts of Jutinian to be met with in Bracton and Fleta) had it not been for a peculiar incident, which happened at a very critical time, and contributed greatly to it’s upport.

incident I mean was the fixing the court of common pleas, the grand tribunal for diputes of property, to be held in one certain pot; that the eat of ordinary jutice might be permanent and notorious to all the nation. Formerly that, in conjunction with all the other uperior courts, was held before the king’s