Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b6zl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T19:48:56.674Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Magna Carta and Statutory Law

from Part I - Legal Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

By
Anthony Musson
Edited by
Candace Barrington  and
Sebastian Sobecki
Candace Barrington
Affiliation:
Central Connecticut State University
Sebastian Sobecki
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Get access

Summary

Traditionally the impetus for legislation came from the sovereign. The law-codes attributed to Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kings exemplified the monarch’s apparent lead in promulgating laws for the good of his subjects. Royal confirmation of the laws of the realm (especially the laws of St Edward the Confessor) was expected of a monarch at his coronation. The experience during the thirteenth century of calling extraordinary assemblies of representatives to discuss the affairs of the realm and approve royal edicts was reflected in Edward II’s coronation oath (1308), which included an obligation on the king to uphold ‘the laws and rightful customs which the community of your realm shall have chosen’. The consensual element to royal legislation developed further during the fourteenth century with the frequent summoning of parliaments and general recognition that this was where adjustments to the law of the land should be deliberated and enunciated. The commons’ request for remedy of specific matters deemed to be for the welfare to the realm in return for their assent to taxation became an established part of parliamentary procedure. The common petitions in which the knights and burgesses attending parliament articulated their demands were frequently used as a basis for legislation. By Richard II’s reign it could be declared that ‘the law of the land was made in parliament by the king and the lords spiritual and temporal and all the commons of the kingdom’. As Bishop Alcock expressed in his sermon at the opening of parliament in 1485, it was a cooperative enterprise uniting the sovereign and his people in pursuit of ‘good governance’.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature , pp. 54 - 65
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Brand, P., Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Cavill, P., The Early English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Doig, J. A., ‘Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in Late Medieval England’, Historical Research 71 (2002), 253–75.Google Scholar
Hanbury, H. G., ‘The Legislation of Richard III’, American Journal of Legal History 6 (1962), 95–113.Google Scholar
Holt, Sir James, Magna Carta, 3rd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Maddicott, J. R., ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 18 (1987), 27–43.Google Scholar
Musson, A., Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Musson, A. and Ormrod, W. M., The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.Google Scholar
Ormrod, W. M., ‘On and Off the Record: The Rolls of Parliament, 1337–1377’, Parliamentary History 23 (2004), 29–56.Google Scholar
Ormrod, W. M.‘“Common Profit” and “The Profit of the King and Kingdom”: Parliament and the Development of Political Language in England, 1250–1450’, Viator 46 (2015), 219–52.Google Scholar
Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., ‘The Early Statutes’, Law Quarterly Review 50 (1934), 201–23, 540–71.Google Scholar
Rowland, D., ‘The End of the Statute Rolls: Manuscript, Print and Language Change in Fifteenth-Century English Statutes’, in The Fifteenth Century IX: Concerns and Preoccupations, ed. Clark, Linda, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012, 107–26.Google Scholar
Skemer, D. C., ‘Reading the Law: Statute Books and the Private Transmission of Legal Knowledge in Late Medieval England’, in Learning the Law: Teaching and the Transmission of English Law, 1150–1900, ed. Bush, Jonathan and Wijfels, Alain, London: Hambledon, 1999, 113–31.Google Scholar
Thompson, F., Magna Carta: Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300–1629, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1948; repr. 1978.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×