The essays in Communities and Courts in Britain, 1150-1900 all reflect the wider concept of legal history - how legal processes fitted into the social and political life of the community and how courts and other legal processes were used by contemporaries. In doing so they aim both to justify the study of legal history in its own right and to show how legal records, including those of a variety of central and local courts, can be used to further our understanding of a wide range of social, commercial, popular and political history.

Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law...

Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels. By arguing that English common law...