I ought to have been writing lectures about the history of the Canon Law. Instead of so doing I have been led away into a lengthy discourse on Lyndwood. I have come to a result that seems to be heterodox, but I do not know exactly how heterodox it is and should be extremely grateful if you would give me your opinion upon a question which lies rather within your studies than within mine. It seems to me clear, that in Lyndwood's view the law laid down in the three great papal law-books is statute law for the English ecclesiastical courts and overrules all the provincial constitutions, and further that apart from the law contained in these books the Church of England has hardly any law--in short there is next to nothing that can be called _English_ Canon Law. I must wait until I am again in Cambridge to read what has been written about this matter in modern times, but any word of counsel that you can give me will be treasured. From a remark that you once made I inferred that in your opinion our Church historians have been too patriotic. I feel pretty sure of this after spending two months with Lyndwood, and if I find that my conclusions about the law of our ecclesiastical courts are at variance with the prevailing doctrine, may be I shall print what I have been writing, that is to say if either _L. Q. R._ or _E. H. R._, will let me trail my coat through its pages.
_Roman Canon Law in the Church of England_ appeared in 1898. It was a collection of six essays, one of which--the delightful story of the Deacon who turned Jew for the love of a Jewess--had been published as far back as 1886. Of the rest the decisive part consisted of articles contributed to the _English Historical Review_ in 1896 and 1897. So far as a case can be demolished by argument, the case for the legal continuity of the Church in England was demolished by Maitland. He proved that the Popes' decretals were regarded as absolutely binding by our English canonists; that throughout Christendom the Pope was regarded as the Universal Ordinary or supreme source of Jurisdiction; that a considerable portion of the Canon Law was built out of English cases; that the provincial constitutions in England were of the nature of bye-laws and insignificant, while the libraries of our canonists were filled with foreign treatises; in fine, that the thirty-two Commissioners who set their names to the opinion that the ecclesiastical judges in England were not bound by the statutes which the Popes had decreed for all the faithful would have been condemned by any English ecclesiastical tribunal in the Middle Ages as guilty of heresy. No doubt portions of the Canon Law were not as a matter of fact enforced in England, but this was not because the Courts Christian rejected them, but because the Temporal power would not permit their enforcement.