Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Part One The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law
- I Introductory: the French Prelude to Modern Historiography
- II The Common-law Mind: Custom and the Immemorial
- III The Common-law Mind: the Absence of a Basis of Comparison
- IV The Discovery of Feudalism: French and Scottish Historians
- V The Discovery of Feudalism: Sir Henry Spelman
- VI Interregnum: the Oceana of James Harrington
- VII Interregnum: the First Royalist Reaction and the Response of Sir Matthew Hale
- VIII The Brady Controversy
- IX Conclusion: 1688 in the History of Historiography
- Part Two The Ancient Constitution Revisited: a Retrospect from 1986
- Index
V - The Discovery of Feudalism: Sir Henry Spelman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the First Edition
- Part One The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law
- I Introductory: the French Prelude to Modern Historiography
- II The Common-law Mind: Custom and the Immemorial
- III The Common-law Mind: the Absence of a Basis of Comparison
- IV The Discovery of Feudalism: French and Scottish Historians
- V The Discovery of Feudalism: Sir Henry Spelman
- VI Interregnum: the Oceana of James Harrington
- VII Interregnum: the First Royalist Reaction and the Response of Sir Matthew Hale
- VIII The Brady Controversy
- IX Conclusion: 1688 in the History of Historiography
- Part Two The Ancient Constitution Revisited: a Retrospect from 1986
- Index
Summary
THE English were to discover feudalism in the way foreshadowed by Craig: in the form, that is, of a single code of law which, it was believed, had been observed, or borrowed from in, every nation of the west; they were to borrow definitions from the Lombard books and their French commentators and apply these to their common law. But they were to do this very late. The common lawyers resisted the discovery, and it was not made by English civilians. It may be that the influence of Gentili and the mos Italicus distracted the latter's attention from the work that had been done at Bourges. Civilians were certainly not encouraged to undertake independent investigations of the common law, but in neither Fulbecke nor Cowell, the two doctors of James I's reign who did attempt comparison of the two laws, do we find historical work comparable to Craig's. There are the beginnings of it in Cowell's Interpreter: he took definitions of feudal terms (including feudum itself) from the Libri Feudorum, Hotman and other Continental feudists and pointed out that they were applicable and useful in the study of English law, and suggested that the close similarity of the Norman Grand Custumier to feudal law on one hand and common law on the other provided an obvious clue to the manner in which such law had come into England.
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- The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal LawA Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 91 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987