[Sidenote: _Francis Hotman and Roman law._]
[28] The _Epistre adressée au tygre de la France_, a violent invective against the Cardinal of Lorraine, still finds admirers among students of French prose. Apparently Hotman would have been the last man to preach a Reception of Roman law in England. Being keenly alive to the faults of Justinian’s books, he resisted the further romanization of French law, demanded a national code, admired the English limited monarchy, and by his _Franco-Gallia_ made himself in some sort the ancestor of the ‘Germanists.’ Some of these ‘elegant’ French jurists were so much imbued with the historical spirit that in their hands the study of Roman law became the study of an ancient history. The following words cited and translated by Dareste from Baudouin (_François Hotman_, p. 19) have a wonderfully modern sound: ‘Ceux qui ont étudié le droit auraient pu trouver dans l’histoire la solution de bien des difficultés, et ceux qui ont écrit l’histoire auraient mieux fait d’étudier le développement des lois et des institutions, que de s’attacher à passer en revue les armées, à décrire les camps, à raconter les batailles, à compter les morts.’ ‘_Sine historia caecam esse iurisprudentiam_, disait Baudouin.’ (Brissaud, _Histoire du droit français_, p. 349).
[Sidenote: _Coke and Hotman. Polydore Virgil._]
[29] Coke, Introductory Letter to Part 10 of the _Reports_, and Preface to Coke upon Littleton (_First Institute_). The words of Hotman which moved Coke to wrath will be found in _De verbis feudalibus commentarius_ (F. Hotmani Opera, ed. 1599, vol. II., p. 913) s.v. _feodum_. Hotman remarks that the English use the word _fee_ (longissime tamen a Langobardici iuris ratione et instituto) to signify ‘praedia omnia quae perpetuo iure tenentur.’ He then adds that Stephanus Pasquerius (the famous Étienne Pasquier) had given him Littleton’s book: ‘ita incondite, absurde et inconcinne scriptum, ut facile appareat verissimum esse quod Polydorus Virgilius in Anglica Historia de iure Anglicano testatus est, stultitiam in eo libro cum malitia et calumniandi studio certare.’ To a foreign ‘feudist’ Littleton’s book would seem absurd enough, because in England the _feudum_ had become the general form in which all land-ownership appeared. Brunner (_Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, vol. II., p. 11) puts this well: ‘Wo jedes Grundeigentum sich in Lehn verwandelt, wird das Lehn, wie die Entwicklung des englischen Rechtes zeigt, schliesslich zum Begriff des Grundeigentums.’