Smith’s inaugural orations.
[18] Of Smith’s two orations there is a copy in Camb. Univ. Libr. Baker MSS. XXXVII. 394, 414. Mr Mullinger (Hist. Univ. Cambr., vol. II., p. 127) has given an excellent summary. The following passage is that in which the Professor approaches the question whether in England there is a career open to the civilian. He has been saying that we ought not to study merely for the sake of riches. ‘Tamen si qui sint qui hoc requirant, sunt archiva Londini, sunt pontificia fora, forum est praefecti quoque classis, in quibus proclamare licet et vocem vendere; est scriptura; singuli pontifices cancellarios suos habent et officiales et commissarios, qui propter civilis et pontificii iuris professionem in hunc locum accipiuntur.’ The orator proceeds to ask whether there is any youth who ungratefully thinks that proficiency in legal science will not find an adequate reward. ‘In quo regno aut in cuius regis imperio tam stulta illum opinio tenebit? In hoccine nobilissimi atque invictissimi nostri principis Henrici octavi regno, cuius magnificentia in bonas literas, studiumque in literatos, omnium omnis memoriae principum facta meritaque superavit, cuius ingentia in academias beneficia, licet nulla unquam tacebit posteritas, tamen omni celebratione maiora reperientur. Cum strenue laboraveris et periculum ingenii tui feceris, teque non lusisse operam sed dignum aliquo operae precio et honore ostenderis, cur dejicies animum? Cur desperatione conflictabis? Cur de tanto fautore ingeniorum, tam insigni bonae indolis exploratore, tam potenti Rege, tam munifico, tam liberali et egregio amatore suorum demisse viliterque sentias?’
Diplomacy and the civil law.
There follows much more flattery of the king as a patron of learning of every kind. ‘Iuris quidem civilis consulti facultas in hac republica cum ad multos usus pernecessaria est, tum a principe nostro nequaquam negligi aut levem haberi, vel hoc argumento esse potest, quod tam amplo planeque regio stipendio et meam hic apud vos mediocritatem et alium Oxonii disertum ac doctum virum ius hoc civile praelegere profiterique voluit.’ And the study of the civil law is the high road to diplomatic service. ‘Ius vero civile sic est commune ut cum ex Anglia discesseris, nobiles, ignobiles, docti, indocti, sacerdotes etiam ac monachi cum aliquod specimen eruditionis videri volunt exhibuisse, nihil fere aliud perstrepunt quam quod ex hoc iure civili et pontificio sit depromptum.’
The rewards for civilians.
The king has wisely employed civilians in his many legations. There follow compliments paid to Stephen Gardiner, Thomas Thirlby, William Paget, Thomas Wriothesley, and Thomas Legh. On the whole, the professor can hold out to his pupils the prospect of diplomatic employment, of masterships in the chancery (‘sunt archiva Londini’), of practice in the ecclesiastical courts and the court of admiralty, and besides this they are to remember that the king is a great patron of learning. I do not see any hint that knowledge of Roman law will help a man at the bar of the ordinary English courts.
For more of the attempt to put new life into the study of Roman law at Cambridge, see Mullinger, op. cit., vol. II., pp. 132 ff. Though Somerset desired to see a great civil law college which should be a nursery for diplomatists, the Edwardian or Protestant Reformation of the church was in one way very unfavourable to the study of the civil law. Bishoprics and deaneries were thenceforth reserved for divines, and thus what had been the prizes of his profession were placed beyond the jurist’s reach. Dr Nicholas Wotton (d. 1567), dean of Canterbury and York, may be regarded as one of the last specimens of an expiring race. Men who were not professionally learned, men like Sir Francis Bryan (d. 1550) and Sir Thomas Wyatt (d. 1542), had begun to compete with the doctors for diplomatic missions and appointments. Also the chancellorship of the realm had come within the ambition of the common lawyer, and (though Bishop Goodrich may be one instance to the contrary) the policy which would commit the great seal to the hands of a prelate was the policy which would resist or reverse ecclesiastical innovations. Even the mastership of the rolls, which had been held by doctors of Padua and Bologna, fell to the common lawyers. Thomas Hannibal, master of the rolls (1523-1527), must, one would think, have been an Italian, as were the king’s Latin secretaries Andrea Ammonio and Pietro Vannes.
The heathenry of the Digest.
[19] See Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. I., pp. 471-501, where the cry of ‘heathenry!’ is raised against the civil law. Janssen’s attempt to praise the canon law as radically Germanic while blaming the ‘absolutistic’ tendencies of the civil law seems strange. Was not the canon law, with its pope, qui omnia iura habet in scrinio pectoris sui, absolutistic enough?
Wyclif on English and Roman law.