'The terms for common justice'

In the England of Elizabeth II, few people have any close contact with the law. The householder is liable to jury service, a witness may give evidence, the purchaser of property may consult a solicitor and for the motorist there are numerous legal hazards. These incidents apart, few become embroiled with the law and the number which engages in litigation is small indeed. It was far otherwise in Shakespeare's day. The English were then noted litigants, surpassed only by the Welsh, and lawsuits abounded. The old axiom - that sooner or later every Elizabethan turns up in the records of one court or another - has much truth in it; indeed, but for this, we should know less about Elizabethan dramatists, Shakespeare not excluded.

That Elizabethans were 'law conscious' to an extreme degree does not, however, imply that they were unduly quarrelsome folk. Such, of course, there were - peppery characters like Sir Thomas Tresham whose son betrayed the Gunpowder Plot, and notorious scoundrels like William Gardiner, J.P., the enemy of the London actors-but for most of the subjects of Elizabeth I, appeal to the courts was a natural step. In the first place, they were less insulated from the law than are their descendants. Jury service was a regular, not an exceptional duty, and in a large county could involve over a thousand jurymen a year. Techniques of property dealing and family settlement produced familiarity with the law also; one of the favourite assurances, the fine, was no less than a collusive lawsuit in a royal court. With titles dependent on legal devices and jury service a pressing obligation, it is small wonder that law came directly into the lives of Elizabethan Englishmen.