Law, Lawyers and Litigants in Early Modern England

This collection of essays by prominent historians is written in memory of Christopher W. Brooks, whose work placed legal culture and legal consciousness at the centre of how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English society is understood. The essays build on several strands of his scholarship and take them in new directions.

They cast fresh light on key arguments within common law history, looking at how distinct groups understood and made use of legal process, and what drove people to sue or to stay away from court. The volume also includes two essays by Brooks that had not appeared before, one on the relationship between law and religion and another on law and political revolution in seventeenth-century England.

The book will interest scholars of early modern history, legal history and the English common law tradition.