siastical was separated from the Civil Court. This division has continued (with the exception of a temporary reunion in the reign of Henry I.) till the present period; the Ecclesiastical tribunal deciding, according to the rules and practice of the Civil and Canon Law, generally, on all matters relating to the Church, to the spiritual discipline of the laity, and, among other questions of a mixed nature, upon two of the most important kind, namely, the contract of marriage and the disposition of personal property after death (r). It is not necessary to dwell on the original reasons for assigning these mixed subjects to the jurisdiction of the Spiritual Courts. It was an arrangement at the time almost universally prevalent in Christendom.

The Ecclesiastical Courts, however, were not the only tribunals in which the Roman law was administered. In the High Court of Admiralty (s) (established about the time of Edward I.) and in the Courts of the Lord High Constable and the Earl Marshal (the Courts of Honour and Chivalry), the mode of proceeding was regulated by the same code.

The Courts of Equity also borrowed largely, and for a long time almost exclusively, from the same jurisprudence. Almost every Lord High Chancellor from Beckett to Wolsey-that is, from the Conquest to the Reformation-was an ecclesiastic; and it was a matter of course, that, like every eminent ecclesiastic of those days, he should be well skilled in the Civil

(r) Burn's Preface, xvii. Lyndwood's Provinciale, pp. 96-7, 261, 316 (ed. 1679, Oxford).

(8) Blackstone, vol. iii. p. 68; Millar's English Government, vol. xi. p. 338.

and Canon Law. Indeed, it was chiefly because they were deeply versed in this jurisprudence, though partly, no doubt, because their general attainments were far superior to those of the lay nobility, that the dignitaries of the Church were usually (t) employed in the foreign negotiations of this period (u). Nor can it be denied by the most zealous admirer of our municipal law that, during the period which elapsed from the reign of Stephen to Edward I., the Judges of Westminster Hall had frequent recourse to the Justinian Code; for in truth the writings of Fleta contain many literal transcripts of passages taken from the Digest and the Institutes (x).

Lastly, in the Courts of the two Universities the same system prevailed. Universities, which are not the least remarkable institutions of Christendom, had indeed originally been founded for the express purpose of teaching this science, and even in this country, where the feudal law so largely prevailed, had succeeded in kindling into a flame the precious spark which the schools of the cloisters and the

(t) Hurd's Dialogues, Moral and Political, vol. ii. p. 183; Duck, De Usu, &c., Juris Civilis, p. 364.

(u) By the Statutes of York Cathedral express provision is made for the absence of the Dean when employed beyond seas in the service of the State. The Bishop of Bristol, who was also Lord Privy Seal, was one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Utrecht; the last instance, I believe, of the kind.

(x) Millar, p. 325; Preface to Halifax' Civil Law; Mackintosh's Law of Nature and Nations, p. 52; Lord Holt, 12 Mod. Rep. p. 482: "Inasmuch as the laws of all nations are doubtless raised out of the ruins of the Civil Law, as all Governments are sprung out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, it must be owned that the principles of our law are borrowed out of the Civil Law, therefore grounded upon the same reason in many things."

learning of the clergy had preserved from total extinction (y).

I pass now to the epoch of the Reformation. On the Continent, where the Civil Law was the basis of all municipal codes, the study of this science was scarcely, if at all, affected by this memorable event. In England it was otherwise. The professors of the Civil and the Canon Law belonged chiefly to the Ecclesiastical Courts, and were associated in the minds of the people partly with the exactions (≈) of Empson and Dudley in the preceding reign, and partly with the authority of the Pope. Severe blows were dealt at the former, which were aimed solely at the latter system.

"The books of Civil and Canon Law were set "aside to be devoured with worms as savouring too "much of Popery," says the learned Ayliffe in his history of the University of Oxford during the Visitation of 1547 (a). And Wood (b), after stating "That as for other parts of learning at Oxford, a "fair progress was made in them," observes, "The "Civil and Canon Laws were almost extinct, and "few or none there were that took degrees in them, "occasioned merely by the decay of the Church and 66 power of the Bishops."

(y) See Lyndwood's Life, Biog. Brit. Dedication; Ridley's View of Civil and Ecclesiastical Law, p. 118; Zouche's Preface to his Treatise on the Punishment of Ambassadors, &c., to Henry, Marquis of Dorchester; et vide infra.

(2) Empson and Dudley justified their extortions by citations from the Civil Law. See Hurd's Dialogues, Moral and Political, vol. ii. p. 211, though they contain a very superficial and very imperfect sketch of the fortunes of the Civil Law in England.

(a) Ayliffe's Oxford, vol. i. p. 188.

(b) Wood's Hist. and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, vol. ii. b. i. s. lxxix. (ed. Gutch).

In 1536, Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Secretary of State, and Vice-gerent of the King in Spirituals, was appointed (by the King's seal used for causes ecclesiastical) Visitor of that University; by the same instrument, he promulgated, in the name of the King, certain injunctions, of which the fifth was

"That as the whole realm, as well clergy as laity, "had renounced the Pope's right and acknowledged "the King to be the supreme head of the Church, no "one should thereafter publicly read the Canon Law, nor should any degree in that Law be con"ferred" (c).

About the same time, or rather earlier, similar injunctions were issued to the University of Oxford: these are preserved in the State Paper Office, and the corresponding injunction to the one just mentioned ist as follows:

"Quare volumus ut deinceps nulla lectio legatur palam et publicè per Academiam vestram totam in "jure Canonico sive Pontificio, nec aliquis cujus con"ditionis homo gradum aliquem in studio illius juris "Pontificii suscipiat, aut in eodem in posterum pro"moveatur quovis modo." These injunctions (for there never was, as is commonly believed, any statutable provision on the subject) underwent some modification from the regulations of Edward VI. In 1535, Henry VIII. appointed certain Visitors, the chief of whom were Richard Layton and John London, LL.D., to visit the University of Oxford; these

(c) Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. i. c. xxix. App. No. lvii., lviii.; Cooper's Annals of the University and Town of Cambridge, p. 375.

Visitors joined a Civil to the Canon Law Lecture in every Hall and Inn.

In 1549, a Visitation of the University of Cambridge took place under the auspices of the Protector Somerset. Bishop Ridley was appointed to be one of the Visitors, and one of the professed objects of this Visitation, according to Bishop Burnet (d), was to "convert some fellowships appointed for encourag"ing the study in Divinity to the study of the Civil "Law; in particular, Clare Hall was to be suppressed." Bishop Ridley found his task very difficult and odious, and wrote to the Protector that, to diminish the number of divines went against his conscience. Somerset replied : "We should be loth anything "should be done by the King's Majesty's Visitors "otherwise than right and conscience might allow "and approve; and visitation is to direct things for "the better, not the worse; to ease consciences, not "to clog them ;" and further, "my Lord of Canterbury hath declared unto us, that this maketh partly a conscience unto you that divines should be di"minished; that can be no cause; for first, the same was met before in the late King's time to unite the "two Colleges together, as we are sure ye have heard, "and Sir Edward North can tell, and for that cause "all such as were students of the Law, out of the

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newly-created Cathedral Church, were disappointed "of their livings, only reserved to have been in that "Civil College. The King's Hall being in a manner "all Lawyers, Canonists were turned and joined to "Michael House, and made a College of Divines, แ wherewith the number of Divines was much aug

(d) Burnet, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 222.