Page:English Law and the Renaissance.djvu/57

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Note 11
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in theyr youth schold study commynly therin—I thynk we schold not nede to seke partycular remedys for such mysordurys as we haue notyd before; for surely thys same publyke dyscyplyne schold redresse them lyghtly; ye, and many other mow, the wych we spake not yet of at al.'

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.'

Pole and the reform of the land laws.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.)

Starkey's legal studies.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