The formation of the English common law

John Hudson's authoritative but accessible introduction to the formation of the English common law, expressly designed for students and general readers as well as scholars, is assured of a wide welcome. It spans the century and a half from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta; and, within a strong interpretative framework, it integrates the legal developments with the wider changes in the thought, society and politics of the time. Some manifestations of medieval law will already be known to most readers; it feuds and ordeals, its outlaws, its hangings and mutilations. John Hudson shows us how these familiar aspects fit into the system of medieval English law as a whole, and how that system relates to what we today call "common law"--The body of custom common throughout England which first moulded, and then defined, people's concept of legal norms, and from which subsequent law developed and against which it has been judged.

Dr Hudson explores the role and functioning of law in society; how people used it for their own purposes, and how it was in turn used to control them. Law was a means of settling disputes, of facilitating actions, and of regulating behaviour. Throughout he is able to illustrate and animate these themes by detailed discussion of particular cases, some dramatic, some gruesome. The result is not only to maintain the human interest of a subject which can too easily become aridly technical; it also throws a vivid light on the lives and concerns of the men and women of Anglo-Norman England.