The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts: 1590-1640

by Wilfrid R. Prest

Overview

The Tudor and Stuart inns of court were major centres of learning and literature, as well as professional associations of practising lawyers. This book sketches the evolution of the inns from their medieval origins and traces the dramatic impact of the societies' rapid expansion through the Elizabethan era and beyond. Prest's comprehensive study based on original sources surveys the structure and functions of the inns, outlining key aspects, from tensions between junior and senior members to the nature and effectiveness of their educational role. Its lively prose locates the inns within the cultural, political, religious, and social context of Shakespearean and pre-civil war England. This corrected and revised second edition of a classic work addresses recent scholarship on the early modern inns of court and includes a new chapter introducing the book to twenty-first-century readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108845380
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/05/2023
Series:	Cambridge Studies in English Legal History
Edition description:	2nd Revised ed.
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Wilfrid R. Prest AM is Professor Emeritus of History and of Law at the University of Adelaide, a senior fellow of Queen's College in the University of Melbourne, and a member of the Council of the Selden Society. He has published widely on the social history of law and lawyers in early modern England.

Table of Contents

1. Dimensions; 2. The quality of membership; 3. Ranks of membership; 4. Administration and government; 5. Discipline and disorder; 6. Learning the law; 7. Legal and liberal education; 8. Papists; 9. Preachers, puritans and the religion of lawyers; 10. The Inns of Court and the English revolution.

Editorial Reviews

‘Written with a mastery of the subject that only experience and long familiarity with scholarship can give, the second edition shows the same enthusiasm for the subject as the original work. The admirable precision in its details is coupled with a plain and highly enjoyable prose, which will no doubt captivate the reader.’ Guido Rossi, H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher