Renaissance, Reformation and Reception, and a part characteristic of that liberal and rational university of which he was professor, public orator and vice-chancellor[18]. Some German historians, as you are aware, have tried to find or to fashion links that will in some direct and obvious manner connect the Reformation and the Reception. In one popular version of the tale protestantism finds a congenial ally in the individualism and capitalism of the pagan Digest[19]. In truth I take it that the story is complex. Many currents and cross-currents were flowing in that turbid age. It so happens that in this country we can connect with the heresiarchal name of Wyclif a proposal for the introduction of English law, as a substitute for Roman law, into the schools of Oxford and Cambridge[20]. On the other hand, the desire for a practical Reception of the civil law is ascribed to the future cardinal, who in his last days reconciled England for a moment, not with the Rome of the Digest, but with the Rome of the Decretals. And by the way we may notice that when the cardinal was here upon his reconciliatory errand he had for a while as his legal adviser one of the most learned lawyers of that age, the Spaniard Antonio Agustin. But we in England take little notice of this famous man, who, so foreigners assure us now-a-days, began the historical study of the canon law and knew more about the false Isidore than it was comfortable for him to know[21]. Our Dr Smith was protestant enough; but his Oxford colleague Dr John Story showed zeal in the cremation of protestants, helped Alva (so it is said) to establish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, was hanged as a traitor at Tyburn in 1571 and beatified as a martyr at Rome in 1886. Blessed John Story was zealous; but his permanent contribution to the jurisprudence of his native land was (so far as I am aware) an early precedent for the imprisonment of a disorderly member by the House of Commons, and a man may be disorderly without being a jurist[22]. Ulrich Zäsi went part of the way with Luther; but then stayed behind with Erasmus[23]. He had once compared the work that he was doing for the Corpus Juris with the work that Luther was doing for the Bible[24]. The great Frenchmen answered the religious question in different ways. One said ‘That has nothing to do with the praetor’s edict.’ His rivals charged him with a triple apostasy[25]. Three or four of them were stout huguenots, and we must not forget that Calvin and Beza had both been at Bourges and had both studied the civil law. Melanchthon also was a warm admirer of Roman jurisprudence[26]. It is reported that Elizabeth invited Francis Hotman to Oxford[27]. He was protestant enough, and fierce enough to exchange letters with a tiger[28]. He is best known to English law-students as the man who spoke light words of Littleton and thus attracted Coke’s thunderbolt[29]; but if he thought badly of Littleton,