The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, Volume 1"One of the Truly Great Pieces of Historical Literature of all Time" --Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages 66. Originally published: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898. 2 vols. xxxviii, 688; xiv, 691 pp. Reprint of the second and best edition. The History of English Law was the first systematic history based on modern historical methods. It addresses the period before the Norman Conquest in 1066, but deals primarily with the creation and establishment of the common law, a process initiated in the reign of Henry II (1154-1189) and concluded in the reign of Edward I (1272-1307). The first volume traces this history. The second volume treats the doctrines of the common law, including tenure, the law of personal condition, status and estate, and the jurisdiction and communities of the land. Gracefully written and enriched with countless references this is an essential book. First published in 1895, it remains a primary text for students of legal history and the social history of medieval England. |
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The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I Frederic William Maitland,Frederick Pollock No preview available - 2015 |
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abbot action advowson alienation ancient demesne assize bailiffs barons become bishop borough Bracton Bracton's day Britton Brunner burgesses canon charter chattels church claim clerk common law Conquest corporation custom debt demesne disseised doctrine Domesday Book ecclesiastical England English law feoffment feudal frankalmoin freehold French gage gift give Glanvill hand heir held Henry Henry II Hist hold hundred Ibid inheritance judgment jurisdiction jury justice king king's court knights land lawyers Leges litigation lord lord's manor Manorial Courts matter merchet Norman Normandy Note Book novel disseisin ownership person Pipe Roll plaintiff plea rolls possession possessory proprietary question quod reign rent rolls Roman law royal rule scutage seems seised seisin Select Pleas serf serjeanty sheriff socage speak statute tenant tenement tenure term termor thegns thing thirteenth century township villein villeinage wardship word writ of right writs of entry
Popular passages
Page 47 - ... has passed into common use as a kind of ornament of speech, without any clear sense of its historical meaning. The two phrases are, indeed, intimately connected; they come from the time when the king's protection was not universal, but particular, when the king's peace was not for all men or all places, and the king's highway was in a special manner protected by it. Breach of the king's peace was an act of personal disobedience, and a much greater matter than an ordinary breach of public order;...
Page 83 - ... writs and oaths, have French names. In the province of justice and police, with its fines, its gaols and its prisons, its constables, its arrests, we must, now that outlawry is a thing of the past, go as far as the gallows if we would find an English institution.
Page xxxiv - And, in point of fact, there is no trace of the laws and jurisprudence of imperial Rome, as distinct from the precepts and traditions of the Roman Church, in the earliest Anglo-Saxon documents. Whatever is Roman in them is ecclesiastical.
Page 35 - But we must remember that the thane had a definite legal rank. His wergild for example, the fixed sum with which his death must be atoned for to his kindred, or which he might in some cases have to pay for his own misdoing, was six times as great as a common man's; and his oath weighed as much more in the curious contest of asseverations, quite different from anything we now understand by evidence, by which early Germanic lawsuits were decided.