[10] Viollet, _Droit civil français_, p. 25: ‘C’est le mouvement scientifique de la Renaissance qui, semblable à un courant d’électricité, donne ainsi au vieux droit romain une vie nouvelle. Son autorité s’accroît par l’action d’une science, pleine de jeunesse et d’ardeur, d’une science qui, comme toutes les autres branches de l’activité humaine, s’épanouit et renaît.’ Flach, in _Nouvelle revue historique de droit_, vol. VII., p. 222: ‘En France Cujas porte à son apogée le renom de l’école nouvelle. Quelle autre préoccupation cette école pouvait-elle avoir que de faire revivre le véritable droit de la Rome ancienne, celui que la pratique avait touché de son souffle impur, celui qu’elle avait corrompu?’ [Sidenote: _Reginald Pole and the Reception. Defects of English law. Reception of the civil law recommended. Pole and the reform of the land laws. Starkey’s legal studies._] [11] _Starkey’s England_, Early English Text Society, 1878, pp. 192 ff.; and see _Letters and Papers, Henry VIII._, vol. VIII., pp. 81-84, and _Ibid._ vol. XII., pt. 1, pp. xxxii-xxxiv. Thomas Starkey was employed in the endeavour to win Reginald Pole to King Henry’s side in the matter of the divorce from Catherine and the consequent breach with Rome. The negotiation failed, but Starkey took the opportunity of laying before Henry a dialogue which he (Starkey) had composed. The interlocutors in this dialogue were Pole and the well-known scholar Thomas Lupset, and Pole was represented as expounding his opinions touching political and ecclesiastical affairs. How far at all points Starkey fairly represented Pole’s views may be doubted. Still we have respectable evidence that Pole had talked in the strain of the following passage, and at any rate Starkey thought that in King Henry’s eyes he was befriending Pole by making him speak thus.