Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth

The 'Lower Branch' of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England

C. W. Brooks (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

412 Seiten

2004
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-0-521-89083-0 (ISBN)

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Historians have long recognized that members of the lower branch of the legal profession, the ancestors of the modern solicitors, played an important part in early modern English society, but difficulties in establishing their identities and recovering their career patterns have hitherto left them virtually unstudied. This work charts the massive sixteenth-century increase in central court litigation and offers an explanation of it largely in terms of social change and the decline of local jurisdictions. At the same time, it argues that the period witnessed a major turning point in the relationship between the legal profession and English society. The number of practitioners in the lower branch who were associated with the legal institutions of London grew to such an extent that by 1640 the ratio of lawyers to population was not much different from that in the early twentieth century. Although this tremendous growth in the amount of legal business and the number of legal practitioners created some serious administrative problems, the commonly held view that the lower branch in this period was largely untrained, dishonest, and uncontrolled is no more than a myth.

List of tables and figures; Preface; Abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Lawyers and the royal courts in London during the reign of Elizabeth; 3. The legal profession in the provinces; 4. The increase in litigation; 5. The causes of the increase in litigation; 6. The increase in litigation and the legal profession; 7. The attitudes of layman and attempts at reform; 8. Clerkship, the inns of chancery, and legal education; 9. Private practice; 10. Public office and politics; 11. Fees and income; 12. Conclusion; Appendix; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.

Erscheint lt. Verlag	24.6.2004
Reihe/Serie	Cambridge Studies in English Legal History
Zusatzinfo	Worked examples or Exercises
Verlagsort	Cambridge
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Gewicht	520 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Recht / Steuern ► Privatrecht / Bürgerliches Recht ► Berufs-/Gebührenrecht
ISBN-10	0-521-89083-7 / 0521890837
ISBN-13	978-0-521-89083-0 / 9780521890830
Zustand	Neuware