vogue all over the weſt of Europe, where before it was quite laid aſide[1] and in a manner forgotten; though ſome traces of it’s authority remained in Italy[2] and the eaſtern provinces of the empire[3]. This now became in a particular manner the favourite of the popiſh clergy, who borrowed the method and many of the maxims of their canon law from this original. The ſtudy of it was introduced into ſeveral univerſities abroad, particularly that of Bologna; where exerciſes were performed, lectures read, and degrees conferred in this faculty, as in other branches of ſcience: and many nations on the continent, juſt then beginning to recover from the convulſions conſequent upon the overthrow of the Roman empire, and ſettling by degrees into peaceable forms of government, adopted the civil law, (being the beſt written ſyſtem then extant) as the baſis of their ſeveral conſtitutions; blending and interweaving it among their own feodal cuſtoms, in ſome places with a more extenſive, in others a more confined authority[4].
Nor was it long before the prevailing mode of the times reached England. For Theobald, a Norman abbot, being elected to the ſee of Canterbury[5], and extremely addicted to this new ſtudy, brought over with him in his retinue many learned proficients therein; and among the reſt Roger ſirnamed Vacarius, whom he placed in the univerſity of Oxford[6], to teach it to the people of this country. But it did not meet with the ſame eaſy reception in England, where a mild and rational ſyſtem of laws had been long eſtabliſhed, as it did upon the continent; and, though the monkiſh clergy (devoted to the will of a foreign primate) received it with eagerneſs and zeal, yet the laity who were more intereſted to preſerve the old conſtitution, and had already ſeverely felt the effect of many Norman innovations, continued wedded to the uſe of the common law. King Stephen imme-
