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G. R. Elton as a Legal Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Clive Holmes
Clive Holmes
Affiliation:
The Institute of Historical ResearchLondon
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Extract

‘I AM not’, Geoffrey Elton insisted, ‘I am not a legal historian.’ The provenance of this solemn denial is curious. Elton was giving a lecture in the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn to the Selden Society, the pre-eminent learned society for the study of legal history in England, in 1978. He had been invited to join its Council in the previous year, and was to preside over the Society from 1982 to 1985. Even from that eminence, writing his study of F.W.Maitland, Elton persisted in his earlier denial: he was not ‘a historian of law’. Manifestly this was not an opinion shared by his colleagues in the Selden Society who invited him to lecture in 1978, and elected him to their presidency five years later. And it is certainly easy to discount Elton's denial as a false modesty. He was the mentor of a cadre of distinguished scholars whose work, more obviously than his own, centred on the study of courts, legal procedures or doctrines. He had emphasised in all his writings that those historians—particularly those social historians—who had plundered the rich records generated by the courts, were obliged to recognise that the ‘stifling formality’ of the latter could conceal essential issues, and badly mislead the neophyte. ‘Critical analysis of the available sources’ was imperative; ‘only a precise knowledge of the machinery can really unlock the meaning of the record’. And, most important, Elton was a distinguished historian in his own right of an instrument of critical importance, one of the three Maine modes of juridical change, for constitutional and legal development and innovation: he was a preeminent student of legislation, more specifically, of parliamentary statute.

Type
The Eltonian Legacy
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 7 , December 1997 , pp. 267 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1997

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References

1 ‘English Law’, Studies 3(40), 274; Maitland, vii.

2 ‘Crime’, Studies 3(41), 290, 300, 303.

3 Sir Henry Maine suggested three ‘instrumentalities’ ‘by which Law is brought into harmony with society’: legal fictions, equity, and legislation (Ancient Law (Everyman edn, 1917), 15).

4 For meat prices, see Heinze, H. W., ‘The Pricing of Meat: A Study in the Use of Royal Proclamations in the Reign of Henry VIII’, Historical Journal 12 (1969), 595Google Scholar. For sewers, see Richardson, H. C., ‘The Early History of the Commissions of Sewers’, English Historical Review [hereafter EHR] 34 (1919), 385–93Google Scholar; Holmes, Clive, ‘Statutory Interpretation in the Early Seventeenth Century: The Courts, the Council, and the Commissioners of Sewers’, in Law and Social Change in British History, ed. Guy, J. A. and Beale, H. G. (1984), 107–17Google Scholar [hereafter, Holmes, ‘Statutory Interpretation’]. For statutory agencies, see Tudor Revolution, 189–223. For proclamations, ‘Proclamations’, Studies 1(19); Heinze, R. W., The Proclamations of the Tudor Kīngs (Cambridge, 1976), chap. 6Google Scholar.

5 ‘Political Creed’, Studies 2(31), 226.

6 ‘English Law’, Studies 3(40), 274.

7 Hill, Christopher, Puritanism and Revolution (1958), p. 28Google Scholar.

8 ‘Human Rights’, Studies 4(51), 69.

9 Elton, reviews of Lawyers in Early-Modern Europe and America, ed. Prest, W. R., in Times Literary Supplement [hereafter TLS], 6 03 1981, 262Google Scholar; of Langbein, J. H., Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Anciai Régime in J. of Modern History 50 (1978), 737–8Google Scholar; of Levy, L. W., Origins of the Fifth Amendment in EHR, 84 (1969), 839–40Google Scholar; ‘Crime’, Studies 3(41), 289.

10 Maitland, 35; ‘Butterfield’, Studies 4(63), 267, 276.

11 Elton, , review of Levy, L. W., Origins of the Fifth Amendment, in EHR, 84 (1969), 839Google Scholar.

12 Style: Elton, review of Langbein, J. H., Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance, in TLS, 20 09 1974, 991Google Scholar. Holdsworth, and Radzinowicz, : ‘English Law’, Studies 3 (40), 276–7Google Scholar; ‘Crime’, Studies 3(41), 289, 296 n. 5, 302; Maitland, 29. Journals: ibid., 2, 76.

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14 Elton, , review of Lawyers in Early Modern Europe and America, ed. Prest, W. R., in TLS, 6 03 1981, 262Google Scholar.

15 Tudors (1955), 417.

16 Constitution (1982), xii, 148, 150–1; Maitland, 84, 86–7; ‘Lex’, Studies 4(50), 37, 48.

17 Elton, , review of Lawyers in early modern Europe and America, ed. Prest, W. R., in TLS, 6 03 1981, 262Google Scholar; Maitland, 35.

18 See Yale, D. E. C., ‘The Revival of Equitable Estates in the Seventeenth Century: An Explanation by Lord Nottingham’, Cambridge Law J. (1957), 72–84Google Scholar.

19 The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L. and Heath, D. D. (7 vols., 1892), VII, 623Google Scholar [hereafter, Bacon's Works].

20 Tudors (1955), 167–9; Constitution (1982), 236–40.

21 Holmes, , ‘Statutory Interpretation’, 109Google Scholar; 1 Plowden 82 (Partridge v. Strange and Croker); 109 (Fulmerston v. Steward) in The English Reports (177 vols., 1900–1930), LXXV, 129–31, 170–2 [hereafter ER]Google Scholar.

22 SirHatton, Christopher, A Treatise concerning Statutes (1677)Google Scholar; A Discourse upon the Exposition and Understanding of Statutes, ed. Thorne, S. E. (San Marino, 1942)Google Scholar: Elton's account was, as he acknowledged, heavily dependent upon Thome's introduction to this work, see Constitution (1982), 238–9, and nn 30, 31. The best recent survey is Reports from the Lost Notebooks of Sir James Dyer ed. Baker, J. H., 2 vols., Selden Soc., vols. 109–10 (1994), I, lixlxiGoogle Scholar (hereafter Dyer's Reports).

23 Reform and Reformation, 147. The statute was clearly Cromwell's work – see Lehmberg, S. E., The Reformation Parliament, 1529–36 (Cambridge, 1970), 155–6Google Scholar.

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25 ‘High Road’, Studies 2(28), 165.

26 Bacon's Works, VII, 395, 418, 618.

27 I Co. Rep., 134a in ER, LXXVI, 303.

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29 The Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. Baker, J. H., 2 vols., Selden Soc., vols. 93–4 (1977–1978), II, 192–200 [hereafter, Spelman's Reports]Google Scholar; Bean, J. M. W., The Decline of English Feudalism, 1215–1540 (Manchester, 1968), 235–56 [hereafter Bean, Decline]Google Scholar; Simpson, A. W. B., ‘The Equitable Doctrine of Consideration and the Law of Uses’, U. of Toronto Law J., 16 (1965), 3, 26, 35Google Scholar. Also Les Reports des Cases en Ley quefurent argues en temps du Roy Edward le Quart (1680) Pasch., 4 Edw. IV, fol. 8, pl. 9; Bacon's Works, VII, 402.

30 Spelman's Reports, I, 228–30; II, 195–203; Bean, , Decline, 273–83Google Scholar; Ives, E. W., ‘The Genesis of the Statute of Uses’, EHR, 82 (1967), 673–97Google Scholar: Ives's suggestion that the Case of Lord Dacre was decided by ‘the partisan interests of the common-law judges’ (686–7) seriously underestimates the pressure brought to bear on them by the crown.

31 I Co. Rep. 124a-5a, I29b-30a in ER, LXXVI, 281–7, 295–7; Bacon's Works, VII, 423.

32 I Plowden 59 in ER, LXXV, 94. And see Gough, J. W., Fundamental Law in English Constitutional History (Oxford, 1955), 25–6Google Scholar; Simpson, A. W. B., An Introduction to the History of the Land Law (Oxford, 1961), 174–5 [hereafter, Simpson, Land Law]Google Scholar.

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35 Simpson, , Land Law, 204–6Google Scholar; Baker, J. H., An Introduction to English Legal History (3rd edn, 1990), 322–7Google Scholar. 1 Co. Rep. 124b-5a, 129b-30a in ER, LXXVI, 281–7, 295–7; Bacon's Works, VII, 397.

36 White, Stephen D., Sir Edward Coke and the Grievances of the Commonwealth (Manchester, 1979), 49, 79Google Scholar; Burgess, Glenn, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (1996), 174–93Google Scholar.

37 Maitland, 85; ‘Early-Tudor Council’, Studies 1(18), 327; ‘High Road’, Studies 2(28), 165; ‘England & the Continent’, Studies 3 (42), 309; review of Ferguson, A. B., Clio Unbound, Studies 3(II e), 470–1Google Scholar; ‘The State’, Studies 4(49), 11–12; ‘Butterfield’, Studies 4(63), 276.

38 England (1955), 401, 417.

39 5 Co. Rep. 99b–100a in ER, LXXVII, 210; Holmes, , ‘Statutory Interpretation’, 112Google Scholar.

40 Holmes, Clive, ‘Parliament, Liberty, Taxation, and Property’, in Parliament & Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War, ed. Hexter, J. H. (Stanford, 1992), 142–4Google Scholar.

41 ‘Human Rights’, Studies 4(51), 71–2, 74, 76.