It seems fairly certain that, besides all that he effected, Henry had at times large projects in his mind: a project for a great college of law (possibly a College of Justice in the Scotch sense), a project for the reformation of the Inns of Court, which happily were not rich enough to deserve dissolution[45], also perhaps a project for a civil code as well as the better known project for a code ecclesiastical. In Edward VI’s day our Regius and German Professor of Divinity, Dr Martin Butzer, had heard, so it seems, that such a scheme had been taken in hand, and he moved in circles that were well informed. He urged the young Josiah to go forward in the good work; he denounced the barbarism of English law and (to use Bentham’s word) its incognoscibility[46]. The new ecclesiastical code, as is generally known, was never enacted; but we know equally well that the draft is in print. Its admired Latinity is ascribed to Prof. Smith’s immediate successor, Dr Walter Haddon. I take it that now-a-days few English clergymen wish that they were living--or should I not say dying?--under Dr Haddon’s pretty phrases[47]. Codification was in the air. Both in France and in Germany the cry for a new Justinian was being raised, and perhaps we may say that only because a new Justinian was not forthcoming, men endeavoured to make the best that they could of the old[48]. How bad that best would be Francis Hotman foretold.
And then we see that in 1535, the year in which More was done to death, the Year Books come to an end: in other words, the great stream of law reports that has been flowing for near two centuries and a half, ever since the days of Edward I, becomes discontinuous and then runs dry. The exact significance of this ominous event has never yet been duly explored; but ominous it surely is[49]. Some words that once fell from Edmund Burke occur to us: ‘To put an end to reports is to put an end to the law of England[50].’ Then in 1547 just after King Henry’s death a wail went up from ‘divers students of the common laws.’ The common laws, they said, were being set aside in favour of ‘the law civil’ insomuch that the old courts had hardly any business[51]. Ten years later, at the end of Mary’s reign, we read that the judges had nothing to do but ‘to look about them,’ and that for the few practitioners in Westminster Hall there was ‘elbow room enough[52].’ In criminal causes that were of any political importance an examination by two or three doctors of the civil law threatened to become a normal part of our procedure[53]. In short, I am persuaded that in the middle years of the sixteenth century and of the Tudor age the life of our ancient law was by no means lusty.