civil law process into our courts of justice, yet did not hinder the
clergy from reading and teaching it in their own schools and
monasteries.

[Footnote a: _A.D._ 1138.]

[Footnote b: Gervas. Dorobern. _Act. Pontif. Cantuar. col._ 1665.]

[Footnote c: Rog. Bacon. _citat. per_ Selden. _in Fletam._ 7. 6. _in
Fortesc._ _c._ 33. & 8 Rep. Pref.]

[Footnote d: Joan. Sarisburiens. _Polycrat._ 8. 22.]

FROM this time the nation seems to have been divided into two parties;
the bishops and clergy, many of them foreigners, who applied
themselves wholly to the study of the civil and canon laws, which now
came to be inseparably interwoven with each other; and the nobility
and laity, who adhered with equal pertinacity to the old common law;
both of them reciprocally jealous of what they were unacquainted with,
and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real
merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one
hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] speak of our
municipal laws upon all occasions; and, on the other, from the firm
temper which the nobility shewed at the famous parliament of Merton;
when the prelates endeavoured to procure an act, to declare all
bastards legitimate in case the parents intermarried at any time
afterwards; alleging this only reason, because holy church (that is,
the canon law) declared such children legitimate: but "all the earls
and barons (says the parliament roll[f]) with one voice answered, that
they would not change the laws of England, which had hitherto been
used and approved." And we find the same jealousy prevailing above a
century afterwards[g], when the nobility declared with a kind of
prophetic spirit, "that the realm of England hath never been unto this
hour, neither by the consent of our lord the king and the lords of
parliament shall it ever be, ruled or governed by the civil law[h]."
And of this temper between the clergy and laity many more instances
might be given.

[Footnote e: _Idem, ibid._ 5. 16. Polydor. Vergil. _Hist._ _l._ 9.]

[Footnote f: _Stat. Merton._ 20 _Hen. III._ _c._ 9. _Et omnes comites
& barones una voce responderunt, quod nolunt leges Angliae mutare,
quae hucusque usitatae sunt & approbatae._]

[Footnote g: 11 Ric. II.]

[Footnote h: Selden. _Jan. Anglor._ _l._ 2. Sec. 43. _in Fortesc._ _c._
33.]

WHILE things were in this situation, the clergy, finding it impossible
to root out the municipal law, began to