s, being newly[u] discovered at Amalfi,
soon brought the civil law into vogue all over the west of Europe,
where before it was quite laid aside[w] and in a manner forgotten;
though some traces of it's authority remained in Italy[x] and the
eastern provinces of the empire[y]. 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[z].

[Footnote u: _circ. A.D._ 1130.]

[Footnote w: _LL. Wisigoth._ 2. 1. 9.]

[Footnote x: _Capitular. Hludov. Pii._ 4. 102.]

[Footnote y: Selden _in Fletam._ 5. 5.]

[Footnote z: Domat's treatise of laws. c. 13. Sec. 9. _Epistol.
Innocent. IV. in M. Paris. ad A.D._ 1254.]

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[a], 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[b], 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 immediately
published a proclamation[c], forbidding the study of the laws, then
newly imported from Italy; which was treated by the monks[d] as a
piece of impiety, and, though it might prevent the introduction of the