Why The History Of English Law Is Not Written

Why the History of English Law is Not Written is a thought-provoking lecture by Frederic William Maitland, one of the most prominent legal historians of the late 19th century. In this lecture, Maitland questions why there has been so little attention paid to the history of English law, despite its importance for understanding the legal system not only of England but also of the United States and other common-law countries. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in legal history or the history of English common law. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Our patience of centennial celebrations has been somewhat severely tasked this year, nevertheless it may be allowed me to remind you that next year will see the seven-hundredth birthday of English legal memory. The doctrine that our memory goes back to the coronation of Richard I. and no further is of course a highly technical doctrine, the outcome of a statute of limitation, capricious as all such statutes must be; still in a certain sense it is curiously true. If we must fix a date at which English law becomes articulate, begins to speak to us clearly and continuously, the 3rd of September 1189 is perhaps the best date that we can choose. The writer whom we call Glanvill had just finished the first textbook that would become a permanent classic for English lawyers; some clerk was just going to write the earliest plea-roll that would come to our hands; in a superb series of such rolls law was beginning to have a continuous written memory, a memory that we can still take in our hands and handle. I would not for one moment speak slightingly of the memorials of an earlier time, only I would lay stress on the fact that before the end of the twelfth century our law is becoming very clear and well attested. When another century has gone by and we are in Edward I.'s reign the materials for legal history, materials of the most authoritative and authentic kind, are already an overwhelming mass; perhaps no one man will ever read them all. We might know the law of Edward's time in very minute detail; the more we know the less ready shall we be to say that there is anything unknowable. The practical limit set to our knowledge is not set by any lack of evidence, it is the limit of our leisure, our strength, our studiousness, our curiosity. Seven hundred years of judicial records, six hundred years of law reports; think how long a time seven centuries would be in the history of Roman Law.

Excerpt from Why the History of English Law Is Not Written: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered in the Arts School at Cambridge on 13th October, 1888 I have said that our neighbours are less fortu nate than we are; but perhaps that is not so, for hoarded wealth yields no interest. Of what has been done for the history of Roman law it is needless to speak; every Shred of evidence seems to have been crushed and thrashed and forced to give up its mean ing and perhaps somewhat more than its meaning. But look at the history of French law or of German law; it has been written many times on many dif ferent scales from that of the popular handbook to that of the erudite treatise, while the modern litera ture of monographs on themes of legal history isenormous, a literature the like of which is almost unknown in England. For our backwardness it is some excuse, though hardly a sufficient excuse, that we are overburdened by our materials, are becoming always better aware at once of their great value and of their unmanageable bulk. A Romanist may be able to say about some historical problem - I know all the first-hand evidence that there is, nay, I know it by heart; the truthful English historian will have to confess that he has but flitted over the surface. On the other hand, if we compare the task of writing English legal history with that which French and German historians have before them, there is a fact which goes far to outbalance any disadvantage oc casioned by the heavy weight of our materials. The early centralization of justice gives. To our history a wonderful unity; we have not to compare the cus toms of divers provinces, or the jurisprudences of rival schools; our system is a single system and re volves round \vestminster Hall. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Although this book was envisaged as a joint venture and bears the name of both Pollock and Maitland, it is substantially the work of Maitland. It was recognized at once as a masterpiece and has since been accepted as one of the great histories in the English language. In Maitland's lifetime Acton pronounced him the ablest historian in England. Plucknett said that 'everything he wrote exercises a deep fascination and a personal attraction'. To Sir Maurice Powicke he was 'one of the immortals'. Lord Annan, in the preface to his Leslie Stephen, called him 'perhaps the greatest of all professional historians'. To read The History of English Law, even many years after Maitland's death, is to feel at once the touch of a master.

An authoritative challenge to an entirely case-law based view of legal history.