The chronological scope of this book requires a word of explanation. I originally intended that it should cover an even longer period than it does by including a chapter on the 1640s and 1650s and, perhaps, an epilogue on the way that some of the principal themes played out in the later seventeenth century. In the event, an expansion of the number of areas addressed for the years prior to 1642 has effectively limited what could be included in a single volume. No less important, despite the resurgence of early modern legal history in recent years, the civil war period and the Restoration era remain particularly deep black holes in terms of existing knowledge. The more I have learned about them the more convinced I have become that it would be foolhardy, and very probably misleading, to adventure premature views without undertaking the root and branch research necessary to give the subject the treatment it deserves. While this retreat from the original strategy to a more conventional ‘early modern’ chronology has no doubt resulted in missed opportunities to consider legal, political and social change over a longer period and with due regard for a unique discontinuity, I hope there is some compensation in the wider range of subjects I have attempted to integrate into the present account. Indeed, the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were such a dynamic period in English legal history that it may eventually be concluded that from a legal perspective the ‘revolution’ occurred before the civil wars even though twenty years of political upheaval could hardly fail to leave their mark.