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The English common lawyers wielded their greatest influence in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, with names like Fortescue, Littleton and More. In these years they were more than the only organized lay profession: in the infancy of statute, they, more than anyone, shaped and changed the law; they were the managerial elite of the country; they were the single most dynamic group in society. This book is a study of their formative impact on the whole of English life. Part I examines the legal profession, its position, recruitment, training and career structure, taking as an example the career of Thomas Kebell, a serjeant at-law from Leicestershire, for whom documentation is unusually complete. Part II analyses legal practice: how the lawyer acquired and kept clients, his relationship with them, the pattern of employment, the nature of practice as revealed in the year books, and the attitudes and approaches of the lawyer to the law. The third part considers the impact of the lawyers on substantive law and legal organization.
Sheriffs were among the most important local office-holders in early modern England. They were generalist officers of the king responsible for executing legal process, holding local courts, empanelling juries, making arrests, executing criminals, collecting royal revenue, holding parliamentary elections, and many other vital duties. Although sheriffs have a cameo role in virtually every book about early modern England, the precise nature of their work has remained something of a mystery. The Tudor Sheriff offers the first comprehensive analysis of the shrieval system between 1485 and 1603. It demonstrates that this system was not abandoned to decay in the Tudor period, but was effectively reformed to ensure its continued relevance. Jonathan McGovern shows that sheriffs were not in competition with other branches of local government, such as the Lords Lieutenant and justices of the peace, but rather cooperated effectively with them. Since the office of sheriff was closely related to every other branch of government, a study of the sheriff is also a study of English government at work.
Law in Common draws on a large body of unpublished archival material from local archives and libraries across the country, to show how ordinary people in the later Middle Ages - such as peasants, craftsmen, and townspeople - used law in their everyday lives, developing our understanding of the operation of late-medieval society and politics.
This study addresses the ius commune's relation to and influence on English law. Helmholz aims to fill in some of the gaps in scholarship on the common legal past of Western law, the history of the Roman and canon laws, the history of the ecclesiastical courts, parallels between the ius commune and English common law, and English church history.
This book describes the membership, business and procedure of the privy council during the minority of Henry VIII's son successor, Edward VI. It examines the policy-making, administrative and quasi-judicial functions of the central institution of Tudor government at a time of war, rebellion, financial instability, reform in the Church and potentially violent political change. Professor Hoak analyses the way in which, through the council - a body whose formal existence dated only from 1540 - the dukes of Somerset and Northumberland successively governed the realm in the effective absence of a king. He sheds light on the nature of Somerset's failure, Northumberland's purpose and achievements, as well as on the techniques by which he controlled both the king and council, and the politics of the Reformation in England at the moment of the Protestant's triumph, 1549-50. The book demonstrates the extent to which the Edwardian privy council confirmed and continued earlier 'revolutionary' reform in government; it establishes the uniqueness of the place of Edward's council in the history of Tudor government and of royal councils generally in the sixteenth-century Europe.
Authorities ranging from philosophers to politicians nowadays question the existence of concepts of society, whether in the present or the past. This book argues that social concepts most definitely existed in late medieval and early modern England, laying the foundations for modern models of society. The book analyzes social paradigms and how they changed in the period. A pervasive medieval model was the "body social," which imagined a society of three estates – the clergy, the nobility, and the commonalty – conjoined by interdependent functions, arranged in static hierarchies based upon birth, and rejecting wealth and championing poverty. Another model the book describes as "social hum...
Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the first judge to strike down a law, gave us modern common law by turning medieval common law inside-out. Through his resisting strong-minded kings, he bore witness for judicial independence. Coke is the earliest judge still cited routinely by practicing lawyers. This book breaks new ground as the first scholarly biography of Coke, whose most recent general biography appeared in 1957, and draws revealingly on Coke's own papers and notebooks. The book covers Cokes early life and career, to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603 (a second volume will cover Cokes career under James I and Charles I). In particular, this book highlights Coke's close connection with the Puritans of England; his learning, legal practice, and legal theory; his family life and ambitious dealings; and the treason cases he prosecuted.
This microhistory reconstructs and analyses a protracted legal dispute over a small parcel of land called Warrens Court in Nibley, Gloucestershire, which was contested between successive generations of two families from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Employing a rich cache of archival material, Jason Peacey traces legal contestation over time and through a range of different courts, as well as in Parliament and the public domain, and contends that a microhistorical approach makes it possible to shed valuable light upon the legal and political culture of early modern England, not least by comprehending how certain disputes became protracted and increasingly bitter,...