English Legal History and its Sources

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 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 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.

'The results speak for themselves: the papers collected here, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century, draw upon extensive new archival work, and will be of interest to a readership well beyond the ranks of the specialist legal historians … The inherent interest of the essays gathered here aside, scholars everywhere will be grateful to those among the contributors who have generously made sets of data available to others as appendices to their essays.' Hannes Kleineke, Parliamentary History

• 1. Year book men David J. Seipp; 2. Errores in camera Scaccarii David Ibbetson; 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 Ramsay; 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.