Cambridge
University Press has published an edited essay collection on various aspects of
English legal history in honour of Sir John Baker.
ABOUT THE
BOOK
This volume honours the work and writings
of Professor Sir John Baker over the past fifty years, presenting a collection
of essays by leading scholars on topics relating to the sources of English
legal history, the study of which Sir John has so much advanced. The essays
range from the twelfth century to the nineteenth, considering courts (central
and local), the professions (both common law and civilian), legal doctrine,
learning, practice, and language, and the cataloguing of legal manuscripts. The
sources addressed include court records, reports of litigation (in print and in
manuscript), abridgements, fee books and accounts, conveyances and legal
images. The volume advances understanding of the history of the common law and
its sources, and by bringing together essays on a range of topics, approaches
and periods, underlines the richness of material available for the study of the
history of English law and indicates avenues for future research.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
David
Ibbetson, University
of Cambridge
David Ibbetson has been Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of
Cambridge since 2000, and is Co-Director of the Centre for English Legal
History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of A Historical
Introduction to the Law of Obligations (1999) and has published on a wide range
of subjects in the legal history of England and elsewhere. He is a recipient of
the American Society for Legal History's Surrency and Sutherland Prizes.
Neil
Jones, University
of Cambridge
Neil Jones is Reader in English Legal History at the University of Cambridge,
Co-Director of the Centre for English Legal History at the University of
Cambridge, and Literary Director of the Selden Society. He writes on the
history of English law in the early-modern period, with a particular emphasis
upon equity and the law of real property. He is a recipient of the Selden
Society's David Yale Prize, and of the American Society for Legal History's
Sutherland Prize.
Nigel
Ramsay, University
College London
Nigel Ramsay is a former senior research fellow in the history departments of
University College London and the University of Oxford and in the law
department of the University of Exeter. He has written on medieval and Tudor
legal history, religious history (especially monasticism), art history and
heraldry. He is at present preparing an edition of the medieval records of the
Court of Chivalry for the Selden Society.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
1. Year book men David J. Seip
2.Errores in Camera Scaccarii David Ibbetso
3. Law reporting in the seventeenth century W. H. Bryson
4. The law of contracts as reported in The Times, 1785-1820 James Oldham
5. Reading terminology in the sources for the early common law: seisin, simple
and not so simple John Hudson
6. 'A photograph of English life'?: the trustworthiness of the
thirteenth-century crown pleas rolls Henry Summerson
7. Law, lawyers and legal records: litigating and practising law in late
medieval England Jonathan Rose
8. The fees they earned: the incomes of William Staunford and other Tudor
lawyers Nigel Ramsa
9. The fifteenth-century accounts of the undersheriffs of Middlesex: an
unlikely source for legal history Susanne Brand
10. Local courts in Eastern Sussex, 1263-1835 Christopher Whittick
11. Visualising legal history: the courts and legal profession in image Anthony
Musson
12. The engraved facsimile by John Pine (1733) of the 'Canterbury' Magna Carta
(1215) Simon Keynes
13. The abbess, the empress and the 'Constitutions of Clarendon' Elisabeth van
Houts
14. The Tractatus de Antiquo Dominico Corone ascribed to Anger of Ripon Paul
Brand
15. Another way of doing manuscript catalogues? Charles Donahue, Jr.
16. Common opinion in the fourteenth century: before the common learning,
before the inns of court Ian Williams
17. Henry Sherfield's reading on wills (1624) and trusts in the form of a use
upon a use N. G. Jones
18. Civilians in the common law courts, 1500-1700 R. H. Helmholz
19. The widow's apparel: paraphernalia and the courts Janet S. Loengard
20. 'The glorious uncertainty of the law': life at the Bar, 1810-1830 Michael
Lobban
