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  1. Home
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  3. Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England
  • Cited by 12
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2010
Print publication year:
2009
Online ISBN:
9780511757372
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511757372
Subjects:
Legal History, Law, British History after 1450, History
Information

Book description

Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law was essentially the creation of the wider community, it challenges many current assumptions and opens new perspectives about how early-modern society should be understood. Its magisterial scope and lucid exposition will make it essential reading for those interested in subjects ranging from high politics and constitutional theory to the history of the family, as well as the history of law.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'… an outstanding contribution to early modern English history. It is not just a summary of what others have said, nor even of Brooks' own previous publications, for it is firmly grounded in extensive archival research that makes it an important and often original monograph in its own right. Balanced and fair, it has a quiet yet powerfully independent voice that makes it worth reading in its entirety. It can be warmly recommended for any course in late medieval and early modern social, economic and political history as well as being a work that all scholars of the period, whatever their particular interests, can peruse with pleasure and ponder with profit.'Journal of Continuity and Change

Review of the hardback:'… no early-modern historian of the British Isles, legal or otherwise, should be without this book. It is a notable achievement, over an astonishingly wide range, and will no doubt bear much fruit.'The Cambridge Law Journal

Review of the hardback:'… an unusual and rewarding study of legal theory and practice.'Northern History

Review of the hardback:'… covers an impressively wide range of issues and material … The book gives strong support to further links between social, political and intellectual history, with law as a bridge … As an important contribution to many fields of early modern history, the book is a great success.'Edinburgh Law Review

'Christopher Brooks examines Tudor and early Stuart English law both as a professional practice and a set of principles shaping national and local politics, constitutional theory, economics, landholding, and family life. He achieves striking breadth by combining the classic 'internalist' focus on legal training, institutional evolution, and litigation patterns with 'externalist' concerns about how law shaped society by allocating resources, adjudicating among competing claimants to power, and providing a grammar for conducting political and economic negotiations.'

Source: The Journal of Law and History Review

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