Preface.
Part I: Preliminaries: .
1. Prologue: Early English Law and the Historians.
2. The Background and Origin of Early English Legislation.
Part II: The Making and Meaning of Written Law, 886-1135: .
3. The Impact of Legislation.
4. The Manuscripts of Legislation.
5. Legislation as Text.
6. Legislation as Literature.
7. Conclusion: Legislation as Legal Culture.
Bibliography.
Index.
Patrick Wormald was a college tutor and university lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He was previously a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His publications include The Anglo-Saxons (co-editor, 1982) and Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society (editor, 1983), as well as numerous articles on the legal, religious and cultural history of early medieval Britain and Europe.
"This publication is an event, eagerly awaited and now exceeding
expectation." Times Literary Supplement
"The Making of English Law is the century's finest monograph in
English on medieval law. It is also essential reading for those
interested in continental law, in kingship and in early medieval
rule and in Anglo-Saxon education...(an) outstanding work on the
history of law." English Historical Review
"The first volume of this long awaited work is a magisterial
analysis of the manuscripts and texts of Anglo-Saxon laws."
History
"Wormald's masterful analysis of early European legislation can and
should be required reading for undergraduate and academic alike."
Medium Ævum
"Just in time for the twenty-first century comes Patrick Wormald's
long-anticipated synthesis of years of research and fresh thinking
to provide both neophytes and those with more advanced knowledge a
comprehensive view of the history of scholarship on the laws, their
continental relations, their physical preservation and context, and
their significance as evidence. Wormald is well qualified for this
ambitious undertaking and, as he threads his way through
problematic issues such as the relationships among Frankish legal
codes, he provides us with a sense of territory that simply cannot
be found anywhere else ... Through tables, cross-references, maps,
and formidable indexes, Wormald has made the book accessible and
usable to anyone who has an interest in the origins of English law
... we are unlikely to see a comparable treatment of the subject
for years to come." Mary P. Richards, University of Delaware
"[Wormald] provides a wealth of primary material, often quoted
verbatim in translation, and accompanied by twenty tables of
structures, transmission, and contents of the codes, and the times
and places of the councils which pronounced them ... Bound
elegantly with copious footnotes, this is a monument to a scholar's
lifetime work." Canadian Journal of History
"This book is a great gift to scholarship of many kinds ... A
further volume is promised ... but, even if this were to stand
alone, it would put us all in great debt to its author."
Arbitration Journal
"In the last twenty years Wormald has been the most assiduous
explorer in the area, his brilliant essays constituting individual
expeditions into the territory. The Making of English Law
represents the atlas ... Its breadth is astonishing; one moment
describing the western European context of post-Roman law, the next
subjecting nib widths to microscopic examination to identify the
scribe who wrote quire signatures in English law's oldest
manuscript. The results, great and small, change how we interpret
preconquest law ... Wormald's massive and brilliant study truly for
the first time puts us in a position to know the history of the
origins and early development of English law." Speculum
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