This book measures contemporary attitudes to the law - within and outside of the legal profession – to see how c17th century Englishmen defined the role of law in their society, to see what their expectations were of the law and how these expectations helped shape political debate – and ultimately determined political decisions – over the course of a very turbulent century.

This book provides an illuminating commentary of law reform in the early modern era (1500–1740) and views the moves to improve law and legal institutions in the context of changing political and governmental environments. Taking a fresh look at law reform over several centuries, it explores the efforts of the king and parliament, and the body of literature supporting law reform that emerged with the growth of print media, to assess the place of the well-known attempts of the revolutionary era in the context of earlier and later movements. Law reform is seen as a long term concern and a longer time frame is essential to understand the 1640–1660 reform measures. The book considers two law reform movements: the moderate movement which had a lengthy history and whose chief supporters were the governmental and parliamentary elites, and which focused on improving existing law and legal institutions, and the radical reform movement, which was concentrated in the revolutionary decades and which sought to overthrow the common law, the legal profession and the existing system of courts. Informed by attention to the institutional difficulties in completing legislation, this highlights the need to examine particular parliaments. Although lawyers have often been seen as the chief obstacles to law reform, this book emphasises their contributions – particularly their role in legislation and in reforming the corpus of legal materials – and highlights the previously ignored reform efforts of Lord Chancellors.

This Handbook triangulates the disciplines of history, legal history, and literature to produce a new, interdisciplinary framework for the study of early modern England. Scholars of early modern English literature and history have increasingly found that an understanding of how people in the past thought about and used the law is key to understanding early modern familial and social relations as well as important aspects of the political revolution and the emergence of capitalism. Judicial or forensic rhetoric has been shown to foster new habits of literary composition (poetry and drama) and new processes of fact-finding and evidence evaluation. In addition, the post-Reformation jurisdictional dominance of the common law produced new ways of drawing the boundaries between private conscience and public accountability. Accordingly, historians, critics, and legal historians come together in this Handbook to develop accounts of the past that are attentive to the legally purposeful or fictional shaping of events in the historical archive. They also contribute to a transformation of our understanding of the place of forensic modes of inquiry in the creation of imaginative fiction and drama. Chapters in the Handbook approach, from a diversity of perspectives, topics including forensic rhetoric, humanist and legal education, Inns of Court revels, drama, poetry, emblem books, marriage and divorce, witchcraft, contract, property, imagination, oaths, evidence, community, local government, legal reform, libel, censorship, authorship, torture, slavery, liberty, due process, the nation state, colonialism, and empire.

"This work is the first intensive, scholarly study of the early Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Moreover, it is the first investigation of an early American court from the perspective of broad developments within early society. As such it provides the first serious look at a judicial institution shaping the community within which it functioned and being shaped in turn by forces and developments within that society. The book traces the evolution of the personnel, proceedings, and language of the Pennsylvania high court from its founding in May 1684 to its restructuring under the judicial reforms of 1809." "Rowe thoroughly demonstrates an important change in the court's institutional focus during the American Revolution when the court exhibited both an enhanced interest in the outcome of government prosecutions and a greater concern for the rights of individuals facing criminal charges. The growth of the court's powers are traced as are its accomplishments over time, especially after 1778. Also demonstrated is the process by which the court challenged the executive and legislative branches for authority within the state. Accordingly, the work describes the court's move toward the exercise of judicial review prior to Marshall's landmark Marbury v. Madison (1803) ruling and the course by which the high bench came to be viewed by many as an aristocratic forum, a menace and a barrier to the growth of democracy in Pennsylvania. Rowe examines the steps taken by popular forces in the early nineteenth century to diminish the court's impact and influence, as well as the attempts to remove or intimidate the court's judges." "The importance of this work lies in its evaluation of the court's impact on early Pennsylvanians, white and nonwhite, free and unfree, male and female, young and old, rich and poor. Also documented are the changing role of the court in politics and the evolution of the court's personnel toward greater professionalism. Finally, this book carefully traces the mounting conflict centering on the court as its values and practices increasingly came into conflict with the democratic forces, aspirations, and developments within the state."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The sixteenth century was a turning point for both law and drama. Relentless professionalization of the common law set off a cascade of lawyerly self-fashioning – resulting in blunt attacks on lay judgment. English playwrights, including Shakespeare, resisted the forces of legal professionalization by casting legal expertise as a detriment to moral feeling. They celebrated the ability of individuals, guided by conscience and working alongside members of their community, to restore justice. Playwrights used the participatory nature of drama to deepen public understanding of and respect for communal justice. In plays such as King Lear and Macbeth, lay people accomplish the work of magistracy: conscience structures legal judgment, neighbourly care shapes the coroner’s inquest, and communal emotions give meaning to confession and repentance. An original and deeply sourced study of early modern literature and law, Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England contributes to a growing body of scholarship devoted to the study of how drama creates and sustains community. Penelope Geng brings together a wealth of imaginative and documentary archives – including plays, sermons, conscience literature, Protestant hagiographies, legal manuals, and medieval and early modern chronicles – proving that literature never simply reacts to legal events but always actively invents legal questions, establishes legal expectations, and shapes legal norms.

Two centuries of dramatic change are covered by this exciting and richly illustrated work. Eighteen leading scholars explore the political, social, religious, and cultural history of the period when monarchs based in south-east England imperfectly attempted to extend their authority over thewhole of the British Isles. These centuries witnessed the Reformation, the civil wars, and two revolutions, in which two monarchs, two wives of a king, and two archbishops of Canterbury were tried and executed, and hundreds of men and women tortured and burned in the name of religion. Yet in the same period, an explosion ofliteracy and the printed word, transformations in landscapes and townscapes, new forms of wealth, new structures of power, and new forms of political participation freed minds and broadened horizons. These centuries marked the beginning of Britain's imperial power and its emergence as perhaps themost liberal and mature of European states. The integrated illustrations and maps form an essential part of the book, complementing all aspects of the text. It also contains a Chronology, Glossary, Family Trees of the monarchy, Further Reading, and an extensive Index.