A few years afterwards an enlightened young humanist, of high rank and marked ability, a man who might live to be pope of Rome or might live to be king of England, was saying much evil of the sort of law that Rede had administered and taught; was saying that a wise prince would banish this barbaric stuff and receive in its stead the civil law of the Romans. Such, so we learn from one of his friends, was the talk of Reginald Pole, and a little knowledge of what was happening in foreign countries is enough to teach us that such talk deserves attention[11].
This was the time when Roman law was driving German law out of Germany or forcing it to conceal itself in humble forms and obscure corners[12]. If this was the age of the Renaissance and the age of the Reformation, it was also the age of the ‘Reception.’ I need not say that this Reception--the reception of Roman law--plays a large part in modern versions of German history, and by no means only in such as are written by lawyers. I need not say that it has been judged from many different points of view, that it has been connected by some with political, by others with religious and by yet others with economic changes. Nor need I say that of late years few writers have had a hearty good word for the Reception. We have all of us been nationalists of late. Cosmopolitanism can afford to await its turn[13].
Then we observe that not long after Pole had been advocating a Reception, his cousin King Henry, whose word was law supreme in church and state, prohibited the academic study of one great and ancient body of law--the canon law[14]--and encouraged the study of another--the civil law--by the foundation of professorships at Oxford and Cambridge. We observe also that his choice of a man to fill the chair at Cambridge fell on one who was eminently qualified to represent in his own person that triad of the three R’s--Renaissance, Reformation and Reception. We know Professor Thomas Smith as a humanist, an elegant scholar with advanced opinions about the pronunciation of Greek. We know the Reverend Thomas Smith as a decided, if cautious, protestant whose doings are of some interest to those who study the changeful history of ecclesiastical affairs. Then we know Dr Thomas Smith as a doctor in law of the university of Padua, for with praiseworthy zeal when he was appointed professor at Cambridge he journeyed to the fountain-head for his Roman law and his legal degree[15]. Also he visited those French universities whence a new jurisprudence was beginning to spread. He returned to speak to us in two inaugural lectures of this new jurisprudence: to speak with enthusiasm of Alciatus and Zasius[16]: to speak hopefully of the future that lay before this conquering science--the future that lay before it in an England fortunately ruled by a pious, wise, learned and munificent Prince. Then in Edward VI’s day Thomas Smith as a Master of Requests was doing justice in a court whose procedure was described as being ‘altogether according to the process of summary causes in the civil law’ and at that moment this Court of Requests and other courts with a like procedure seemed to have time, reason and popularity upon their side[17]. Altogether, the Rev. Prof. Dr Sir Thomas Smith, Knt., M.P., Dean of Carlisle, Provost of Eton, Ambassador to the Court of France and Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth was a man of mark in an age of great events. Had some of those events been other than they were, we might now be saying of him that he played a prominent part in Renaissance, Reformation and Reception, and a part characteristic of that liberal and rational university of which he was professor, public orator and vice-chancellor[18].