withdraw themselves by degrees
from the temporal courts; and to that end, very early in the reign of
king Henry the third, episcopal constitutions were published[i],
forbidding all ecclesiastics to appear as advocates _in foro
saeculari_; nor did they long continue to act as judges there, nor
caring to take the oath of office which was then found necessary to be
administred, that they should in all things determine according to the
law and custom of this realm[k]; though they still kept possession of
the high office of chancellor, an office then of little juridical
power; and afterwards, as it's business increased by degrees, they
modelled the process of the court at their own discretion.

[Footnote i: Spelman. _Concil. A.D._ 1217. Wilkins, _vol._ 1. _p._
574, 599.]

[Footnote k: Selden. _in Fletam._ 9. 3.]

BUT wherever they retired, and wherever their authority extended, they
carried with them the same zeal to introduce the rules of the civil,
in exclusion of the municipal law. This appears in a particular manner
from the spiritual courts of all denominations, from the chancellor's
courts in both our universities, and from the high court of chancery
before-mentioned; in all of which the proceedings are to this day in a
course much conformed to the civil law: for which no tolerable reason
can be assigned, unless that these courts were all under the immediate
direction of the popish ecclesiastics, among whom it was a point of
religion to exclude the municipal law; pope Innocent the fourth
having[l] forbidden the very reading of it by the clergy, because it's
decisions were not founded on the imperial constitutions, but merely
on the customs of the laity. And if it be considered, that our
universities began about that period to receive their present form of
scholastic discipline; that they were then, and continued to be till
the time of the reformation, entirely under the influence of the
popish clergy; (sir John Mason the first protestant, being also the
first lay, chancellor of Oxford) this will lead us to perceive the
reason, why the study of the Roman laws was in those days of
bigotry[m] pursued with such alacrity in these seats of learning; and
why the common law was entirely despised, and esteemed little better
than heretical.

[Footnote l: M. Paris _ad A.D._ 1254.]

[Footnote m: There cannot be a stronger instance of the absurd and
superstitious veneration that was paid to these laws, than that the
most le