The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law I

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-246
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Forensic Practice ◽  
Domesday Book ◽  
English Law ◽  
Law Reports

Chapter 6 begins by demonstrating how the compilations of Old English royal law codes underpinned the great thirteenth-century conspectus of common law known as Bracton. It traces them, and the theme of the Conquest, through subsequent thirteenth-century books of English jurisprudence—specifically Britton, Fleta, and the Mirror of Justices. It examines the role of historical material, particularly ancient charters and Domesday Book, in forensic practice in the thirteenth century and later. There are two particular foci: ‘ancient demesne’ cases, and the Quo warranto inquest, on both of which this discussion throws new light. Much use is made of the recent substantial edition of thirteenth-century Law Reports.

Edward the Confessor

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-172
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law ◽  
Edward The Confessor ◽  
King John ◽  
Papal Legate

Chapter 4 shows how during John’s reign the baronial opposition appropriated the figure of the recently canonized Edward the Confessor, and used him as a standard against which to judge the current king. A key part was played by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, which compiled and in important respects elaborated and extended the compilations of Old English law codes made during the twelfth century. The Collection informed opposition thinking prior to the crisis which produced Magna Carta. The chapter also subjects to minute analysis two very unusual episodes recorded in thirteenth-century annals of provincial churches. First, the St Augustine’s, Canterbury account of Duke William’s having allowed the men of Kent, uniquely, to continue to use Old English Laws and customs. This episode is supposed to have taken place at Swanscombe Down in 1066. The second is the Burton Abbey account of what purports to be a dialogue between King John and a papal legate, allegedly in 1211. The nub of the dialogue is a disagreement about the role of Edward the Confessor. The chapter then shows how Henry III re-appropriated St Edward for the royal cause, but by emphasizing his saintliness rather than his alleged legislation. Henry focussed on the development of the cult, expressed in liturgical, artistic, and architectural terms, and focussed on the rebuilt Westminster Abbey. The chapter concludes with a brief envoi on the later medieval expression of the cult, especially under Richard II.

Simon of Pattishall, Pioneer Professional Judge

1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law

The latter part of the twentieth century may not find many of us wishing to pay tribute to bureaucrats, but as Helen Cam reminded us, the civil servant “deserves more credit than he has yet had for building up and maintaining our precious tradition of law and order.” In the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century the process of “bureaucratization” first got underway in England. An early professional civil servant, one specializing in judicial activity, was Simon of Pattishall. His name surfaces in the records in 1190, and it disappears after 1216. His time of activity, then, coincides with an important period for English common law: the years between “Glanvill” and Magna Carta.Simon was one of that group of royal judges who might be termed the first “professionals,” a group that took shape by the middle years of Richard I's reign. By the time of John, about ninety men acted at various times as royal judges, either at the Bench at Westminster, with the court following the king, or as itinerant justices. Many of these had only temporary appointments, making circuits in the counties; but a core of fifteen, who concentrated on the work of the courts, can be regarded as early members of a professional judiciary. Simon of PattishalPs is perhaps the most respected name among the fifteen. He had the longest career on the bench, from 1190 until 1216. He founded a judicial dynasty, for his clerk, Martin of Pattishall, became a judge, as did his clerk, William Raleigh, who had as his clerk Henry of Bracton, author of the great treatise on English law.

The Conquest in Later Medieval English Law II

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-285
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Forensic Practice ◽  
English Law ◽  
The City ◽  
Point Of Reference

Chapter 7 begins with the resurrection in Edward II’s reign of the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, which had first been composed in John’s reign. They were commissioned by Andrew Horn, Chamberlain of the city. More recent works were appended to the Collection, including the Mirror of Justices. The role of this rejuvenated Collection in the politics of the reign is examined, with particular reference to the new clauses of the coronation oath devised in 1308. Items in the Collection are linked with the Modus tenendi parliamentum of 1320-1The chapter then pursues the Conquest as a point of reference through records of later medieval forensic practice, particularly as recorded in the Year Books, and the great works of later medieval jurisprudence. Those of Sir John Fortescue are shown to be exceptional, in that he continued to be explicit about viewing English law in a broad historical perspective, which he showed had traversed the Conquest. Thomas Littleton’s Tenures, Anthony Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, and Year Book cases are adduced as evidence of more conventional, less historically attuned attitudes. The chapter concludes with a consideration of two jurisprudential works of the 1530s—St German’s Dialogue between Doctor and Student and Starkey’s Dialogue between Pole and Lupset—and the sudden interest of government propagandists in the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, as evidenced by compendium of historical precedent known as Collectanea satis copiosa.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt X. Metzmeier
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Background History ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
State Subsidies ◽  
Law Reports

The introduction provides the background history of American law reporting. After the American Revolution, the early law reporters helped create a new common law inspired by the law of England but fully grounded in the printed decisions of American judges. English law reports, whose reporters eventually achieved the same authority as their reports, were the model. It took time for the first state opinions to appear in print because publication was not commercially feasible. The first law reporters collected the opinions of the court, selected the best, and financed their printing; later they received state subsidies. The early Kentucky law reports were extensions of the personalities of their creators, an individualistic group of rising young lawyers, future and former judges, aspiring politicians, and enterprising journalists. The history of Kentucky courts and the state’s political environment are also surveyed.

9 SUMMARY This chapter has been concerned with introducing, in some depth, common law/ case law, the second major source of English legal rules discussed in this book. The role of the judiciary in the development of English law has become apparent as the chapter has progressed. This chapter has also indicated the central importance of a careful dissection of the law reports to ensure that the correct aspects of the case are correctly summarised for a case note and further use. Taken together with Chapter 3, the foundations of an indispensable ‘how to’ approach have been laid. It is now appropriate in the next chapter to place this foundation in its European context looking at the law relating to European human rights and fundamental freedoms and the law relating to the European Community. In Chapter 9, three sources of English law (legislation, case law and European Community law) are further developed by being brought together in a case study. 4.10 FURTHER READING As already mentioned in Chapter 3, if you are a law student the ground covered by this chapter will also be covered in English legal system courses and constitutional or public law courses. Coverage of reading cases can be found in the following excellent texts relating to both the theoretical and practical aspects of legal method. • Sychin, C, Legal Method, 1999, London: Sweet & Maxwell, Chapters 7 and 8. • Twining, W and Miers, D, How To Do Things With Rules, 4th edn, 1999, London: Butterworths, Chapters 7 and 8.

2012 ◽  
pp. 126-126
Keyword(s):  
European Community ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Student ◽  
Law Reports

Status of “Villani” and Other Tenants in Danish East Anglia in Pre-Conquest Times

1921 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 23-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
English Word ◽  
Common Origin ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Domesday Book ◽  
Continuous Use

In the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, Vol. I., pp. 28, etc., I commented upon a thirteenth-century Survey of the Manor of Martham, Norfolk, which seemed to carry back the conditions then existing (both as regards the tenants and the agriculture) to a very much earlier period. The use of the old English word “eriung” (ploughing), to describe a full villein land, implied its continuous use from Angle times all through the Danish occupation. The universal intermixture of lands held by the two classes of villeins and sokemen (by which terms alone the tenants were called), together with the obvious inter-relation of their families, pointed to a common origin and a generally accepted equality of status which was apparently still existent in the thirteenth century. In view of the fact that the manorial conditions of compulsory service had been introduced by the Bishop in 1101 for his newly-founded monastery at Norwich, it was felt not unreasonable to date back to that period the conditions disclosed in the Survey. This would bring us to within a few years of Domesday Book, where the lands are described as almost exclusively held by freemen.

Bentham, Bacon and the Movement for the Reform of English Law Reporting

Utilitas ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick Munday
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Rational System ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law ◽  
Law Reports ◽  
Variable Quality

The disordered state of English law reporting has for long been a favoured theme of writers on the common law. The volume of printed case law, the casual nature of its publication and its variable quality have all been frequently criticized. If earlier centuries had been largely content to express intermittent displeasure, in the nineteenth century concrete solutions were found, the obvious product of this bid to achieve a rational system of law reporting being the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting and its authoritative series of Law Reports. But if ultimately reform of the system was only realized once the profession seized the initiative in the middle of the nineteenth century, it would be an error to suppose that schemes for reform had not been conceived in earlier times. After all, only by a miracle could anything as blatantly haphazard as the quality of law reporting have escaped the strictures of major reformers.

scholarly journals Common Law Equity in a Civil Law Country

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 427
Author(s):  
A H Angelo ◽  
Ashleigh Allan
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Civil Code ◽  
English Law

This article serves to introduce an aspect of current research related to the review of the Seychelles Civil Code and the important question of the role of trusts. The Civil Code is based on the Code Napoléon and has therefore no provision for the trust of English law. The Courts of Seychelles have, however, a statutory equitable jurisdiction. That jurisdiction has given rise to the question whether the trust of England may be able to operate in Seychelles. The prime area of discussion of this possibility has been in relation to the property rights of the parties to a failed concubinage relationship. This article focuses on that discussion. 

The Excavation, Reconstruction, and Fabrication of Old English Law in the Twelfth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-131
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
English History ◽  
English Law

Chapter 3 examines the attempt, parallel with the writing of English history, to preserve and fabricate mainly in Latin pre-Conquest English royal law codes—codes which William I and his successors were said to have endorsed. The first of these compilations of Old English law translated into Latin, dating from the very beginning of the twelfth century, was Quadripartitus. There were also many others, including Tripartita, the Leges Henrici, and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. The chapter shows that many of these are preserved in manuscripts which also include contemporary works of history; others—most notably for the rest of this book, the codex which ended up sequentially in the hands of Archbishop Matthew Parker and of Sir Edward Coke (BL MS. Add. 49366)—were purely legal. It demonstrates that these authentic and apocryphal collections did not become obsolete with the establishment of new common law procedures in Henry II’s reign, but continued to be treated as foundational of English law. The watchword in this case too was continuity with the pre-Conquest past.

A History of the Adoption of Codes of Criminal Law and Procedure in British Colonial Africa, 1876–1935

1974 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. F. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
General Application ◽  
Administrative Service ◽  
Salient Points ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
English Law ◽  
Law Reports ◽  
British Colonies

This article is a survey of the process whereby codes of criminal law and procedure, having their origin in English law, were introduced into the British colonies and protectorates lying between the Sahara and the Zambesi. Such a survey, covering so large an area and period of time, must needs here be brief, but certain salient points emerge clearly from it. A codified body of criminal law and procedure, replacing the English common law and statutes of general application (as modified piecemeal by local Ordinances), had a great appeal to administrators, government law officers, judges and magistrates, and, whatever their differing views as to the respective merits of codes on the Indian, or more purely English, model, they were virtually all agreed that the introduction of such codes was an essential measure of reform. This is hardly surprising in view of the difficulties experienced by judicial officers, of whom the majority were the lay magistrates of the administrative service, in applying the uncodified English law without an adequate supply of text-books or English law reports.

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