I have not found in Polydore Virgil’s History anything about Littleton. There is a passage however in lib. IX. (ed. Basil. 1556, p. 154) in which he denounces the unjust laws imposed by William the Conqueror and (so he says) still observed in his own day: ‘Non possum hoc loco non memorare rem tametsi omnibus notam, admiratione tamen longe dignissimam, atque dictu incredibilem: eiusmodi namque leges quae ab omnibus intelligi deberent, erant, ut etiam nunc sunt, Normanica lingua scriptae, quam neque Galli nec Angli recte callebant.’ Among the badges of Norman iniquity is trial by jury, which Polydore cannot find in the laws of Alfred. This Italian historiographer may well be speaking what was felt by many Englishmen in Henry VIII’s day when he holds up to scorn and detestation ‘illud terribile duodecim virorum iudicium.’ Fisher and More were tried by jury.
[30] For Gentili see Holland, _Inaugural Lecture_, 1874, and _Dict. Nat. Biog._ For his attack on canon law see _De nuptiis_, lib. I., c. 19. For his quarrel with the ‘elegant’ Frenchmen, see _De iuris interpretibus dialogi sex_. The defenders of the new learning and the _mos Gallicus_, as it was called, threw at their adversaries the word ‘barbarian’; the retort of the conservative upholders of the _mos Italicus_ was ‘mere grammarian.’ By expelling such men as the Gentilis, Italy forfeited her pre-eminence in the world of legal study. Nevertheless it is said that both in France and Germany the practical Roman law of the courts was for a long time the law of the ‘Bartolist’ tradition. Esmein (_Histoire du droit français_, ed. 2, p. 776) says: ‘Cujas exerça sur le développement des théories de droit romain suivies en France une action beaucoup moins puissante que Du Moulin, et la filiation du romaniste Du Moulin n’est pas niable: par la forme comme par le fond, c’est le dernier des grands Bartolistes.’
[Sidenote: _Marsilianism and Henricianism._]
[31] Thomas Starkey, when he was trying to win over Reginald Pole to Henry’s side, wrote thus: ‘Thes thyngs I thynke schal be somewhat in your mynd confermyd by the redyng of Marsilius, whome I take, though he were in style rude, yet to be of grete iugement, and wel to set out thys mater, both by the authoryte of scripture and good reysonys groundyd in phylosophy, and of thys I pray you send me your iugement.’ (_Starkey’s England_, Early Engl. Text Soc. 1878, p. xxv.) Chapuis (the imperial ambassador at Henry’s court) to Charles V, 3 Jan. 1534 (_Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._, vol. VII., p. 6): ‘The little pamphlet composed by the Council, which I lately sent to your Majesty, is only a preamble and prologue of others more important which are now being printed. One is called _Defensorium Pacis_, written in favour of the emperor Loys of Bavaria against apostolic authority. Formerly no one dared read it for fear of being burnt, but now it is translated into English so that all the people may see and understand it.’ William Marshall to Thomas Cromwell (_Ibid._, p. 178): ‘Whereas you promised to lend me £20 towards the printing of _Defensor Pacis_, which has been translated this twelve-month, but kept from the press for lack of money, in trust of your offer I have begun to print it. I have made an end of the Gift of Constantine and of Erasmus upon the Creed.’ The ‘Gift of Constantine’ must be the famous treatise of Laurentius Valla. The translation of Marsilius appeared on 27 July, 1535 (_Dict. Nat. Biog._ s.n. William Marshall). In October twenty-four copies had been distributed among the Carthusians in London (_Letters and Papers_, vol. IX., p. 171). In 1536 Marshall complained that the book had not sold, though it was the best book in English against the usurped power of the bishop of Rome (_Ibid._, vol. XI., p. 542). As to Byzantinism, if it be an accident it is a memorable accident that the strongest statement of King Henry’s divinely instituted headship of the church occurs in a statute which enables unordained doctors of the civil (not canon) law to exercise that plenitude of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which God has committed to the king (_Stat._ 37 Hen. VIII., c. 17).