Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/40

24 chelors; as the tate and degree of a erjeant, undefined, did to that of doctor.

crown eems to have oon taken under it’s protection this infant eminary of common law; and, the more effectually to foter and cherih it, king Henry the third in the nineteenth year of his reign iued out an order directed to the mayor and heriffs of London, commanding that no regent of any law chools within that city hould for the future teach law therein. The word, law, or leges, being a general term, may create ome doubt at this ditance of time whether the teaching of the civil law, or the common, or both, is hereby retrained. But in either cae it tends to the ame end. If the civil law only is prohibited, (which is Mr Selden’s opinion) it is then a retaliation upon the clergy, who had excluded the common law from their eats of learning. If the municipal law be alo included in the retriction, (as ir Edward Coke undertands it, and which the words eem to import) then the intention is evidently this; by preventing private teachers within the walls of the city, to collect all the common lawyers into the one public univerity, which was newly intituted in the uburbs.