tion, according to Bishop Burnet, (d) was to "convert some fellowships appointed for encouraging 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. [*xxi] *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 diminished; 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 newly-erected 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, wherewith the number of Divines was much augmented, Civilians diminished. Now at this present also, if in all other Colleges where Lawyers be by the Statutes or the King's injunctions, ye do convert them or the more part of them to Divines, ye shall rather have more Divines upon this change than ye had before. The King's College should have six Lawyers; Jesus College some; the Queen's College and others, two apiece; and, as we are informed by the late King's injunctions, every College in Cambridge one at the least. All these together do make a greater in number than the Fellows of Clare Hall be, and they now made Divines, and the statutes in that reformed Divinity shall not be diminished in number, but increased, as appeareth, although these two Colleges be so united. And we are sure ye are not ignorant how necessary a study that study of Civil Law is to all Treaties with Foreign Princes and Strangers, [*xxii] and how few there be at this present to the King's Majesty's service therein," &c.

Queen Elizabeth, among the Statutes which she promulgated for the University of Cambridge, and which have been recently published by Dr. Lamb, enacted one, De Temporibus Lectionum et Libris prælegendis (c. iv.), in which it is ordered, "Theologicus prælector tantum sacras literas doceat et profiteatur. Jurisconsultus Pandectas, Codicem, vel Ecclesiastica regni Jura quæ nos edituri sumus et non alia præleget." Since the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., when Vacarius first read lectures at Oxford on the Civil Law, the Universities have made it their legitimate boast that the study of the Roman Law found its shelter and encouragement within their pomaria. The history of almost every college will show that the promotion of this study was an object which its founder had at heart. The statutes promulgated after the Reformation, during the royal visitations of the Tudors, as has already been shown, most carefully provided for the furtherance of the same end. The sta

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

tutes of Edward VI. define more closely the knowledge requisite for a Doctor of Civil Law, and set forth the usefulness of such knowledge to the Church and State, as follows: "Doctor Legum-Doctor mox a doctoratu dabit operam legibus Angliæ, ut non sit imperitus earum legum quas habet sua patria, et differentiam exteri patriique juris noscat, et in solemnibus comitialibus quæstionibus unus qui id maximè certissimèque sciat facere ad finem quæstionum quid in illis jus civile, quid ecclesiasticum, quid regni Angliæ jus teneat, defineat, determinetque."(e)

*In truth, the Universities were doubly interested in the pre-[*xxii] servation of this study; first, because the statutes, both those of [*xxiii] the University and of the College, must, in cases of doubt, which not unfrequently arise, receive their interpretation from the Canon and Civil Law; the founders of Colleges (Chicheley and Wykeham for example) were often deeply versed in both branches of jurisprudence, and in cases tried before the Visitors of Colleges, many of the arguments have been drawn from these sources; but, secondly, inasmuch as the degrees conferred at the Universities were the necessary passport to the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons.

Of the five professorships (f) which Henry VIII. founded on the spoils of the Church, one was instituted and endowed at each University for teaching the Civil Law. At Oxford, the lay prebend of Shipton was attached to the Professorship, and in Charles II.'s reign this endowment was expressly recognized and confirmed as an exception to the general law laid down in the Statute of Uniformity. The foundation of these Professorships in some measure counterbalanced the injury which the Civil Law received from the discredit into which the Common Law had fallen.(g) But this was not, I think, the sole or the principal circumstance which kept alive at this time the knowledge of this jurisprudence. About this period a great and important change had begun to take place in the relations of the European communities towards each other, which rendered the preservation *of the study of the civil law of

great, and indeed indispensable necessity to these islands. Dur- [*xxiv]

ing the reign of the Tudors, the English had been compelled, by a multitude of concurring causes (far too many for enumeration in these pages,) to abandon their hopes of permanent conquests in France; nevertheless, at this very period, Great Britain began to assume that attitude with respect to foreign powers, which, from the days of Lord Burleigh to Mr. Canning, it has been the constant endeavour of her wisest and greatest statesmen to enable her to maintain. She became an integral part, in spite of her "salt-water girdle" (h), of the European system, and daily

(e) These statutes are copied from Dr. Lamb's book, but they are, mutatis mutandis, the same as those given to Oxford, save that Oxford has some post-statuta, which Cambridge has not. Twyne's Collect. vol. iv. p. 144, in Turr. Schol. Oxon.; Lamb's Documents from MS. Library, C. C. C. C., p. 127; see also a similar statute of Elizabeth's, 323.

(f) Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Civil Law, Medicine, founded 1540, confirmed 1546. John Story appears to have been the first Professor at Oxford appointed with a fixed salary.-Wood, Hist. & Ant. of Oxford, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 840, 859 (Ed. Gutch.)

(g) Luther openly burnt at Wittenburgh the books of the Canon Law.-Robertson's Charles V. b. ii. (h) Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 1.

more and more connected her interest with that of the commonwealth of Christendom. Every fresh war and revolution on the Continent, every political and religious movement, rendered that interest indissoluble.

The closer the bond of international intercourse became, the more urgent became the necessity for some International Law, to whose decisions all members of the commonwealth of Christendom might submit. The rapid advance of civilization, bringing with it an increased appreciation of the blessings of peace, and a desire to mitigate even the necessary miseries of war, contributed to make this necessity more sensibly felt. A race of men sprang up, in this and in other countries, whose noble profession it became to apply the laws of natural justice to nations, and to enforce the sanction of individual morality upon communities. But the application of these laws and sanctions to independent states, and still more any approach towards securing obedience to them, was no easy achievement. No one nation, it was obvious, had any right [*XXV] to expect another to submit to the private regulations of her municipal code; and yet, according to the just and luminous observation of Sir James Mackintosh, "In proportion as they approached to the condition of provinces of the same empire, it became almost as essential that Europe should have a precise and comprehensive code of the law of nations, as that each country should have a system of municipal law.(i)

It was, as has been said, soon after the era of the Reformation that the science of International Law began to flourish on the Continent; and it has been said that this epoch was on the whole unfriendly to its study in this island. It remains to show by what means any vestiges of it have been preserved; and how a profession, whose duty it was to be "lawyers beyond seas,"() has been maintained in these islands, where honour and emolument have ever, with few exceptions, attended the knowledge and practice of a distinct and isolated system of municipal law.

Long before the Reformation there existed an ancient society of Professors and Advocates, not a corporate body, but voluntarily associated for the practice of the Civil and Canon Law. In 1587, Dr. Henry Hervey, Master of Trinity Hall in the University of Cambridge, purchased from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, for the purpose of providing a fixed place of habitation for this society, an old tenement, called Mountjoy House, on the site of which the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons now stands. In this sequestered place the study and practice of laws proscribed from Westminster Hall, took root and flourished. *The Tudors, who, with all their faults, were unquestionably [*xxvi] the most accomplished and lettered race which as yet has occupied the English throne, always looked with a favourable eye upon civilians, employed them in high offices of state, and set especial value on their services in all negociations with foreign countries. Few, if any, matters of embassy or treaty were concluded without the advice and sanction of some person versed in the Civil Law. The enmity of Henry VIII. to the Canon, as has been observed, materially injured the pro

() Lecture on the Law of Nature and Nations, p. 13. (k) Ayliffe's Parergon Juris Canonici, Introduction.

fession of the Civil Law; but this was a result neither contemplated nor desired by that monarch. He founded, as has been said, a Professorship of Civil Law at both Universities, and in many respects befriended the maintenance and culture of this science. In 1587, Albericus Gentilis, (?) an illustrious foreigner, was appointed to the Professorship of Civil Law at Oxford; his work, De Jure Belli, was in truth the forerunner of Grotius. According to the emphatic language of the learned Fulbeck, he it was "who by his great industrie hath quickened the dead body of the civil law written by ancient civilians, and hath in his learned labours expressed the judgment of a great state, with the soundness of a deep phylosopher, and the skill of a cunning civilian. Learning in him hath showed all her force, and he is therefore admirable because he is absolute."(m)

During the earlier period of the Tudor sway, ecclesiastics, many of them of high renown, were advocates of the civil law, but towards the close of Elizabeth's reign the #profession became, and has ever

since been, composed entirely of lay members. (n) During this [*xxvii]

reign a nice question of International Law was raised in the case of the Bishop of Ross, ambassador to Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth submitted to Drurye, Lewes, Dale, Aubrey, and Johnes, advocates in Doctors' Commons, that most difficult and important question as to the propriety and lawfulness of punishing an ambassador for exciting rebellion in the kingdom to which he was sent. Civilians were also consulted as

to the power of trying() the unhappy Mary herself; and Mr. Hallam seizes on the facts, with his usual sagacity, to demonstrate that the science of International Law was even at this period cultivated by a distinct class of lawyers in this kingdom. James I., who, besides his classical attainments imbibed a strong regard for the Civil Law from his native country, protected its advocates to the utmost that his feeble aid would extend.(p) To this monarch Sir Thomas Ridley dedicated his View of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Law, a work of very considerable merit and of great learning; it had for its object to demonstrate the pettiness and unreasonableness of the jealousy with which the common lawyers had then begun to regard the civilians, and the law which they administered at Doctors' Commons-and it appears to have been by *no [*xxviii] means unattended with success; for it was perhaps a consequence of this able work that, about the year 1604, each of the two Uni

(7) He came from the University of Perugia, died 1609.-Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 858 (Ed. Gutch.)

(m) A Direction or Preparative to the Study of the Law, f. 266 (Lond. 1620, 8vo.) Irving's Introduc. to the Civil Law, s. 97.

(n) An unsuccessful attempt was made in Highmore's case (8 East's Reports, 213) to obtain a mandamus from the archbishop commanding the Dean of the Arches to admit Dr. Highmore a member of the College of Advocates. This was in 1807. (6) Constitutional History, vol. i. pp. 218, 219; Strype, 360-362.

(p) Cowell, who was Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, had acquired a profound knowledge of this law, and had in consequence been chosen Master at Trinity Hall (an office at this moment filled by the learned Judge of the Arches,) published a dictionary of law, in imitation of Calvin's Lexicon Juridicum, a work of much learning, but containing extravagant dicta about the king's prerogative. James shielded him from the wrath of Coke.

versities was empowered by royal charters to choose two members to represent them in Parliament, and by the same Charters they were admonished to select such as "were skilful in the imperial Laws."(q)

The reign of the First Charles produced two Civilians of great eminence, whose reputation, especially that of the latter, was as great on the Continent as in these islands-Arthur Duck and Richard Zouche. The former steadily adhered to the fortunes of his unhappy sovereign; and his work, De Usu ac Authoritate Juris Civilis, has never ceased to maintain its deserved authority. Zouche, who held several high appointments, submitted to the authority of the Parliament. (r) In 1653, the famous case of the Portuguese ambassador happened: Don Pantaleon de Sa, having deliberately murdered an English subject in London, took refuge in the house of his brother, the Portuguese ambassador. That high functionary insisted on the exemption of his brother from punishment on account of the inviolable character which the law of nations impressed upon the dwelling of an ambassador. Cromwell, however, caused him to be tried before a commission composed of Sir H. Blunt, Zouche, Clerk and Turner, Advocates of Civil Law, and others; before whom he was convicted of murder and riot, and for these offences was executed at Tyburn. On this occasion, Zouche wrote a very *able and learned [*xxix] treatise entitled, "A Dissertation concerning the Punishment of Ambassadors who transgress the Laws of the Countries where they reside," &c. This civilian was also the author of several other treatises on public law, the most celebrated of which was entitled, Juris inter Gentes Quæstiones, a book which is to this day of high authority and constant reference by all jurists both in Europe and America.

During the reign of Charles II., various causes conspired to extend and strengthen the influence of the Civilians. The restoration of the orders and discipline of the Church—the rapid growth of commerce and its consequences, augmentation of personal property and increase of shipping the creation of a navy board,(s) and widely spreading relations with foreign states-the two Dutch wars, and the personal merits of the great Civilian of the day, Sir Leoline Jenkins-all contributed to produce this result.

"If," says Sir Robert Wiseman, Advocate-General, writing in 1680, "we look no farther back than twenty years ago, we shall remember the Civil Law did so far spread itself up and down this nation, that there was not any one county which had not some part of the government thereof managed and exercised by one or more of that profession, besides the great employment and practice it had in the Courts in London. So that it being thus incorporated, and, as I may say, naturalised by ourselves into this Commonwealth, it ought not to be reputed or looked upon by us a stranger any longer." (t)

(7) Vide infra, pp. 49, 50.

(r) Zouche had received a patent from King James, assigning to him a stipend of 401. per annum, and all emoluments and privileges enjoyed by "Albericus Gentilis, Frauncis James, and John Budden" A copy of this patent is to be found in Rymer's Fœdera. (s) Vide Pepys' Memoirs, passim.

(1) The extract is taken from a treatise called The Law of Laws, or the Excellency of the Civil Law.