Following the accidental rediscovery of the parliamentary roll for 1305, the thirty-third year of Edward I's reign, Frederic William Maitland (1850 1906) was able to publish this unique and invaluable historical record in full in 1893. Parliament in this period provided an opportunity for the king's subjects to present petitions and for the king's councillors to dispense justice. In his substantial introduction, Maitland, an eminent legal historian, sets the petitions and the transactions of the privy council in the context of medieval jurisprudence. The work is divided into English, Scottish...

Thomas Hobbes ( 5 April 1588 - 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy.Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy. Though on rational grounds a champion of...