Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Cauldron of God's Wrath
- Chapter 2 Bishops of Rome
- Chapter 3 Conversion of the Wild Men
- Chapter 4 Feudalism emerges
- Chapter 5 Land and Folk
- Chapter 6 The Village (1)
- Chapter 7 The Village (2)
- Chapter 8 Village Dance and Song
- Chapter 9 Nature and Superstition
- Chapter 10 Popes and Prelates
- Chapter 11 Rector and Vicar
- Chapter 12 The Making of a Priest
- Chapter 13 Church statistics
- Chapter 14 The Shepherd
- Chapter 15 The Flock (1)
- Chapter 16 The Flock (2)
- Chapter 17 The Silver Lining
- Chapter 18 Dante's Commedia
- Chapter 19 The Royal Court
- Chapter 20 Chivalry
- Chapter 21 Chaucer and Malory
- Chapter 22 The Monastery
- Chapter 23 Cloister Life
- Chapter 24 The Town
- Chapter 25 Home Life
- Chapter 26 Trade and Travel
- Chapter 27 Just Price and Usury
- Chapter 28 The Ghetto (1)
- Chapter 29 The Ghetto (2)
- Chapter 30 Justice and Police
- Chapter 31 From School to University
- Chapter 32 Scholastics and Bible
- Chapter 33 Science
- Chapter 34 Medicine
- Chapter 35 Freethought and Inquisition
- Chapter 36 The Papal Schism
- Chapter 37 The Lollards
- Chapter 38 The Black Death
- Chapter 39 The Hundred Years' War
- Chapter 40 The Mystics
- Chapter 41 The Peasant Saint
- Chapter 42 Artist Life
- Chapter 43 Literary Life
- Chapter 44 Sports and Theatre
- Chapter 45 Women's Life
- Chapter 46 Marriage and Divorce
- Chapter 47 The Old and the New
- Chapter 48 More and Utopia
- Chapter 49 The Fight for the Bible
- Chapter 50 The Open Bible
- Chapter 51 Peasant and Highbrow
- Chapter 52 The Bursting of the Dykes
- Notes
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 30 - Justice and Police
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Cauldron of God's Wrath
- Chapter 2 Bishops of Rome
- Chapter 3 Conversion of the Wild Men
- Chapter 4 Feudalism emerges
- Chapter 5 Land and Folk
- Chapter 6 The Village (1)
- Chapter 7 The Village (2)
- Chapter 8 Village Dance and Song
- Chapter 9 Nature and Superstition
- Chapter 10 Popes and Prelates
- Chapter 11 Rector and Vicar
- Chapter 12 The Making of a Priest
- Chapter 13 Church statistics
- Chapter 14 The Shepherd
- Chapter 15 The Flock (1)
- Chapter 16 The Flock (2)
- Chapter 17 The Silver Lining
- Chapter 18 Dante's Commedia
- Chapter 19 The Royal Court
- Chapter 20 Chivalry
- Chapter 21 Chaucer and Malory
- Chapter 22 The Monastery
- Chapter 23 Cloister Life
- Chapter 24 The Town
- Chapter 25 Home Life
- Chapter 26 Trade and Travel
- Chapter 27 Just Price and Usury
- Chapter 28 The Ghetto (1)
- Chapter 29 The Ghetto (2)
- Chapter 30 Justice and Police
- Chapter 31 From School to University
- Chapter 32 Scholastics and Bible
- Chapter 33 Science
- Chapter 34 Medicine
- Chapter 35 Freethought and Inquisition
- Chapter 36 The Papal Schism
- Chapter 37 The Lollards
- Chapter 38 The Black Death
- Chapter 39 The Hundred Years' War
- Chapter 40 The Mystics
- Chapter 41 The Peasant Saint
- Chapter 42 Artist Life
- Chapter 43 Literary Life
- Chapter 44 Sports and Theatre
- Chapter 45 Women's Life
- Chapter 46 Marriage and Divorce
- Chapter 47 The Old and the New
- Chapter 48 More and Utopia
- Chapter 49 The Fight for the Bible
- Chapter 50 The Open Bible
- Chapter 51 Peasant and Highbrow
- Chapter 52 The Bursting of the Dykes
- Notes
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
We cannot do better than begin here with Professor Petit-Dutaillis, whose labours on English constitutional history have done so much to complement the great work of Stubbs. He writes: “Thanks to Henry II who, we are told, was capable of legal innovation, and to his advisers who understood the principles of Roman Law and knew its technicalities, the English monarchy was the only lay power in Western Europe to establish a common-law by the beginning of the thirteenth century. In France and Germany local custom still prevailed. The characteristic of royal justice in England was that it held local custom as of little account, and that, through its system of assizes and writs, it established a procedure and a jurisprudence of general application which was, on the whole, favourable to a free middle class and hostile to the seignorial spirit. We might well add ‘hostile to the clerical spirit’; for Henry II sought to limit ecclesiastical jurisdiction and to make certain that criminous clerks were punished. The constitutions of Clarendon formed an important and significant part of his legislation.” It is true that Henry's advisers were nearly all clerics; so that, as Pollock and Maitland note with felicitous irony, “it is by popish clergymen that our Common Law is converted from a rude mass of customs into an articulate system; and when the popish clergymen, yielding at length to the pope's commands, no longer sit as the principal justices of the King's Court, the creative age of our medieval law is over”.
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- Information
- Medieval PanoramaThe English Scene from Conquest to Reformation, pp. 366 - 384Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1938