Abstract: This Article initiates a three-part series entitled Legal Ideology and Incorporation. In this series, Mr. Coquillette demonstrates that, although England has fostered a strong common law system, significant intellectual work was done in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by students of the civil law systems dominant on the Continent. Mr. Coquillette traces the development of the juristic works of these English civilians, and examines the civilians' intellectual influence on the English common law. It is his central thesis that the English civilian jurists never intended to achieve a direct "incorporation" of civil law doctrines into the common law. Rather, their lasting achievement has been the significant influence that their ideas about law-their "legal ideology"--have exercised on leading common lawyers. Mr. Coquillette divides the development of English civilian jurisprudence into three periods. The first period, which is the subject of this Article, includes the years from the publication of Christopher St. German's seminal Doctor and Student in 1523 to the storm of protest from common lawyers following the publication of John Cowell's highly controversial The Interpreter in 1607. During this significant period, English civilian writing tended to promote synthesis and accommodation with the common law, and formed a pioneering venture in comparative law, a remarkable ideological effort that rewards study for its own sake.