ROMAN LAW HISTORICAL SCIENCES 297 



of the Inns of Court, I think such extracts are just what we might 

 expect to find. For there can be little doubt that the classic sources 

 of Roman law were in that century more or less familiar, not only to 

 those who had prepared for practice in the Court of Arches and 

 Doctors' Commons, but to all well-educated men. Professor Maitland 

 has shown in his delightful Rede Lecture that England under 

 Henry VIII was in some danger of having a " reception " of her own; l 

 a permanent result of which was that at her universities, where 

 no English law was taught until 1758 at Oxford and 1800 at Cam- 

 bridge, there have been Regius Professors of Civil Law since Henry 

 VIII 's time. Some of them, like Alberico Gentile, Sir Thomas Smith, 

 and John Cowell of Interpreter fame, were of far more than mere 

 academic reputation. It must be remembered, too, that the books 

 of Justinian, though to us they seem foreign, are in a language 

 which to the English of the seventeenth century was still the literary 

 vernacular of all the learned professions. The Roman law had then 

 begun to supply what Sir H. Maine has called the lingua franca of 

 universal jurisprudence. That it should not have had some influence 

 even on English judges and legal writers is almost inconceivable. 



We may here consider the origin of that best known modern 

 product of Roman law which is usually associated with the name 

 of Hugo Grotius. International law, at least in its classic literary 

 beginnings, is admitted to be of Roman mould, and a very slight 

 acquaintance with Grotius's famous book will suffice to convince any 

 one of that fact. Two points are of special interest in this connection; 

 first, that the work of the Italian civilian Alberico Gentile, Regius 

 Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, has lately been shown to be the 

 model on which Grotius improved; 2 and secondly, that the great 

 John Seldcn answered Grotius's earlier book Mare Liberum in 

 learned reply which shows what excellent knowledge of Roman law 

 an English lawyer could possess. Selden prided himself on being 

 a common lawyer, arid certainly had no mean grasp of the common 

 law and its history, as any one will discover who looks at his notes 

 on Fortescue and his book on Fleta. Yet he answered Grotius in 

 a style on which few civilians could have improved. His very de- 

 scription of his opponent as " rerurn humanarum atque divinarum 

 sdentissimum " 3 is an echo of the well-known Roman definition. 

 While he cites Bracton and Fleta, and resorts to English archaeology 

 by introducing the ship on the rose-noble of Edward III as a proof of 

 English supremacy over the sea, yet most of his authorities are from 

 the Code and Digest, and his learning extends even to the Theodosian 

 Code. He speaks of princes becoming sui iuris by prescription; and 



1 Maitland, Canon Law in the Church of England. 



2 Walker, History of International Law, p. 335. 



3 Selden, Mare Clausum (1636), p. 196. 



