The journey into the mind of an Elizabethan lawyer is at best a hazardous affair, but it is also a journey that must be attempted if we are to acquire that knowledge of how the law was learned, interpreted, and applied in an era of decisive legal change. Since knowledge of the law also became an avenue for entering the practical world of government and politics, the mind of the Elizabethan lawyer becomes even more important than has been realised for an understanding of the history of the seventeenth century, and especially the watershed of Jacobean times. The availability of the early notes and textbooks of Thomas Egerton from his residence at Lincoln's Inn in the 1560s and 1570s provide us with an important group of sources for examining the development of a legal mind in the sixteenth century that is crucial for our understanding of the early seventeenth. Moreover, when combined with his later papers and personal correspondence from the 1580s and 1590s, these sources make possible an examination of not only a legal mind, but also the religious, social, and cultural values that underlie Egerton's role in the political and legal problems of the age.

Egerton's legal career was based not only on his studies at Lincoln's Inn, but also on the learning which he had acquired at grammar school and university. Although there is no direct evidence of his studies prior to admission to Brasenose College, his notes and writings at Lincoln's Inn contain sufficient material related to his collegiate studies to investigate his intellectual development beginning with his years at Oxford in the late 1550s.