The chapter concentrates on the intellectual and social identity of the author of the late twelfth-century English law book known as Glanvill, by examining his context, formation and outlook. The method is twofold: first, close engagement with the text, not just what it says, but also how it says it, not just content, but also form and language; secondly, comparison, especially with Richard fitzNigel’s Dialogue of the Exchequer, but also with works from the learned law tradition, in particular the procedural manuals known as Ordines. The chapter explores the processes of composition of the treatise; the significance of its form and style as a means of establishing authority; the ways in which the author identifies with particular courts and particular sources of law; the standing given by specialist knowledge and legal authority; and finally the possible audiences, imagined and real.

This volume is a selection of essays taken from the excellent range of papers presented at the British Legal History Conference hosted by the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research at the University of St Andrews, 10–13 July 2019. The theme of the conference gives this book its title: ‘comparative legal history’. The topic came easily to the organisers because of their association with the St Andrews-based European Research Council Advanced grant project ‘Civil law, common law, customary law: consonance, divergence and transformation in Western Europe from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries’. But the chosen topic was also connected to the fact that this was, we think, the first British Legal History Conference held at a university without a Law faculty. Bearing in mind the question of how far institutional setting determines approach, our hope was that an element of fruitful comparison would stimulate people to think further about the range of approaches to legal history. With its explicit agenda of breaking down barriers, comparative legal history provided a particularly suitable focus for this investigation. After situating the subject matter of comparative legal history, and then discussing the levels of comparison that may be most fertile, this introduction moves on to considering the practical tasks of researching and writing such history, using the essays included in the volume to suggest ways ahead. The introduction groups the essays under certain headings: ‘Exploring legal transplants’; ‘Investigating broader geographical areas’; ‘Case law, precedent and relationships between legal systems’; and ‘Exploring past comparativists and the challenges of writing comparative legal history’. Yet the essays could be kaleidoscopically rearranged under many headings. We hope that the book, like a successful conference, includes many stimulating conversations.

If the subject of my paper derives from the desire to talk about the king whom Warren Hollister knew so well, its title derives from R.W. Southern's famous British Academy Raleigh Lecture, ‘The Place of Henry I in English History'. The lecture reappeared in his collection Medieval Humanism and Other Studies under the title ‘King Henry I’. The original title is the more appropriate, using the word ‘history’ to mean both the past and writings about the past; the lecture situates aspects of Henry's reign both within long-term historical developments and within a broad range of historiography. Here, I hope to share some of this dual aspect but concentrate on legal history, a subject upon which Southern touched but briefly. In particular, I reflect upon periodization and upon the ways in which different historians and different types of legal historiography attribute different degrees of significance to Henry's reign.

Writers in Henry I's reign and its aftermath state their opinions clearly. The author of the Leges Henrici Primi referred to the ‘formidable power [tremendum … imperium] of the royal majesty’ and to ‘the pleas of the king's court, which stand above everything'. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle stated that ‘no one dared injure another in his time. He made peace for man and beast.’ Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies of Merlin referred to the ‘Lion of Justice’, who was identified with Henry. According to William of Malmesbury, By the rigour of inflexible justice he restrained his countrymen peacefully, his nobles with appropriate dignity. He showed the greatest diligence in seeking out thieves and forgers in their dens, and punishing them when found. Nor did he neglect details; having heard that broken coins, although made of good silver, were not being accepted by those making sales, he ordered that all coins should be broken or cut. He punished the false ell in use among merchants, introducing his own forearm as a standard measure for all throughout England. … At the beginning of his reign, so that by fearful example he might make a lasting impression on evildoers, he was more inclined to mutilation of limbs, later to require monetary payments.

The focus of writers was thus on Henry's power throughout his realm, his maintenance of peace, and his dealing with offences such as theft and false moneying.

Transcending the competition state/welfare state dichotomy

As we noted at the outset of the book, Cerny’s (1990) much-cited competition state thesis – and, specifically, his suggestion (with Evans: see Cerny and Evans, 1999; 2004) that the intensification of global economic competition would sound the death knell of the welfare state – provided the immediate impetus for our text. That was directly so for us as editors of the text, for we have worked for some time on exploring the veracity of their argument. Some of our colleagues included in this collection have been less concerned with directly examining the competition state thesis but have instead been engaged in detailed empirical examination of key processes or trends that Cerny and Evans placed at the core of their thesis.

In bringing together these theoretical and empirical research agendas our aim has been, firstly, to address major theoretical debates in the social sciences about how the intensification of global competition has influenced the direction of welfare state reform processes across the OECD in recent decades and, secondly, to offer empirically rooted alternatives to the ‘competition state thesis’ that can better account for how welfare states have responded to competition imperatives in reality. In this chapter we synthesise key arguments from across the book in order to set out an integrated agenda for future research and to underline the value added to these debates when they are approached from a perspective that fuses the applied empirical concerns of traditional social policy scholarship with the broader theoretical perspectives found in comparative political economy and macro-sociology.

As we noted in Chapter One, with the benefit of hindsight we can say that Cerny and Evans over-estimated the threat to the welfare state, but few dispute their central argument that welfare states across the OECD have been subjected to reform agendas that have stressed economic competitiveness. Our task here, therefore, is neither to praise nor to bury the competition state thesis, but instead to articulate a new research agenda addressing the implications of intensified global economic competition for social policy that transcends the welfare state and competition state dichotomy.