A civilising influence of the highest importance was the absorption of the Roman law into their legal, ecclesiastical, and political systems. It is an epoch in the progress of the English, which, although impossible to say at what precise period its influence was the greatest upon their people, I call the third span in the bridge from an immature to a civilised state.
It is certain that the Romans had establishments in England from the time of Claudius (A.D. 43) until the year A.D. 448. During the greater part of these four centuries they governed it as a Roman province in the enjoyment of peace and the cultivation of arts. The Roman laws were {78} administered as the laws of that country, and at one time under the prefecture of their distinguished ornament, Papinian.[8]
To estimate its influence upon the progress and development of England, one must be prepared to accept the now generally recognised opinion, that the Roman Law permeated every branch of jurisprudence—property, procedure, criminal law—all. It was ubiquitous, and even the feudal system, whose origin was attributed, by most of the common-law writers, to the time of William the Conqueror, is shown to have existed long anterior to that reign; and was, probably, the creation of the Romans.
The jurisprudence of Rome was, and has ever been, an unfailing fountain, whence the English people have drawn copious draughts of wisdom and knowledge.
I do not mean by these observations to detract from the common law—crude as it may have been as a science—for, in all that relates to the principles and protection of civil liberty, it was infinitely in advance of the Roman Law.
As a political system, the Roman Law was framed to be the instrument of the despotism, under which it was perfected. As in everything else, the English Law reflected the political genius of the people. They extracted and preserved the good, and rejected the evils, of the Roman system, the absorption of which exhibits keen power of assimilation.
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(d) The Great Charters; The Petition of Right; The Habeas Corpus Act, Passed under Charles, The Bill of Rights in 1688, and The Act of Settlement
The Great Charter of King John contained very few new grants, but, as Sir Edward Coke observes, was mainly declaratory of the fundamental laws of England.
But from his reign (1199) until the end of the reign of William III. (1700), a period of almost exactly five hundred years, the English nation was engaged in enlarging, deepening, and strengthening the forms of a constitutional monarchy. Thus, the Great Charter was confirmed in Parliament by Henry III., the son of John. In the next reign of Edward I., by statute called confirmatio cartarum, the Great Charter was directed to be allowed as the common law. And by a multitude of statutes between the last-named reign and that of Henry IV., its principles were again declared and corroborated. Hume enumerates these statutes as being thirty in all.