Lupset thereupon objects that, seeing we have so many years been governed by our own law, it will be hard to bring this reform to pass. Pole replies that the goodness of a prince would bring it to pass quickly: ‘the wych I pray God we may onys see.’
The Pole of the Dialogue wished to make the power to entail lands a privilege of the nobility. A project of this kind had been in the air: perhaps in King Henry’s mind. See _Letters and Papers, Henry VIII._, vol. IV., pt. 2, p. 2693 (A.D. 1529): ‘Draft bill … proposing to enact that from 1 Jan. next all entails be annulled and all possessions be held in fee simple.… The Act is not to affect the estates of noblemen within the degree of baron.’ This is one of the proposals for restoring the king’s feudal revenue which lead up to the Statute of Uses: an Act whose embryonic history has not yet been written, though Dr Stubbs has thrown out useful hints. (_Seventeen Lectures_, ed. 3, p. 321.)
When Pole left England in 1532 he went to Avignon where Alciato had lately been lecturing and became for a short while a pupil of Giovanni Francesco Ripa (Zimmermann, _Kardinal Pole_, 1893, p. 51), who was both canonist and legist. Whether at any time Pole made a serious study of the civil law I do not know. In 1534 Pole and Starkey were together at Padua; Pole was studying theology, Starkey the civil law. Starkey in a letter says ‘Francis Curtius is dead, to the grief of those who follow the doctrine of Bartholus.’ Perhaps we may infer from this that Starkey was in the camp of the Anti-Bartolists (_Letters and Papers, Henry VIII._, vol. VII., p. 331). In 1535 he says that he has been studying the civil law in order to form ‘a better judgment of the politic order and customs used in our country’ (_Ibid._ vol. VIII., p. 80).
[12] For a general view of the Reception in Germany with many references to other books, see Schröder, _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, ed. 2, pp. 743 ff.; ed. 3, pp. 767 ff.
[Sidenote: _Modern estimates of the Reception._]
[13] For a moderate defence of the Reception, see Windscheid, _Pandektenrecht_, ed. 7, vol. I., pp. 23 ff. (§ 10). Ihering appeals from Nationality to Universality (cosmopolitanism); _Geist des römischen Rechts_, ed. 5, vol. I., p. 12: ‘So lange die Wissenschaft sich nicht entschliesst, dem Gedanken der Nationalität den der Universalität als gleichberechtigten zur Seite zu setzen, wird sie weder im Stande sein die Welt, in der sie selber lebt, zu begreifen, noch auch die geschehene Reception des römischen Rechts wissenschaftlich zu rechtfertigen.’ The following sentences may, I believe, be taken as typical of much that has been written of late years. Brunner, _Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_, 1901, p. 231: ‘Allein was stets Tadel und Vorwurf hervorrufen wird, ist die Art, wie die Rezeption … durchgeführt wurde. Ein nationales Unglück war jenes engherzige Ignorieren des deutschen Rechts, jenes geistlose und rein äusserliche Aufpfropfen römischer Rechtssätze auf einheimische Verhältnisse, die Unkenntnis des Gegensatzes zwischen diesen und dem römischen Rechte, welche taub machte gegen die Wahrheit, dass kein Volk mit der Seele eines anderen zu denken vermag.’