The forms of action are a part of the structure upon which rests the whole common law of England and, though we may have buried them, they still, as Maitland says, rule us from their graves. The following extract is taken from the editors' preface: 'The evasion of the burden of archaic procedure and of such barbaric tests of truth as battle, ordeal and wager of law, by the development of new forms and new law out of criminal or quasi criminal procedure and the inquest of neighbour-witnesses has never been described with this truth and clearness. He makes plain a great chapter of legal history...

'Constitutional history should, to my mind, be a history not of parties but of institutions, not of struggles but of results ...' F. W. Maitland's remarkable course of lectures provides the basic framework of English constitutional history in a brief, but original, scholarly and very readable form. His method is to take five crucial periods and to present in each a panoramic view of the processes of law and government; his attention is always fixed on the constitution as a growing fabric, as something devised and employed by live human beings. And in this work, as in all he subsequently...

"The Best Available Introduction to English Legal History" In this work Professor Colby has gathered, annotated and arranged into a sequential history of English law numerous essays by Frederic William Maitland and Francis C. Montague. Each chapter includes a list of recommended readings. These articles supplied what long had been needed for general readers and for law students-a brief but comprehensive, accurate but untechnical account of the origin and growth of English law. ... this series of articles now forms the best available introduction to English legal history. James F. Colby, iii...