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MILSOM'S LEGAL HISTORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2017

David Ibbetson
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Abstract

Toby Milsom was the most original English legal historian of the twentieth century. This paper gives a preliminary assessment of the importance of his work. charting the ways in which it has changed our thinking about the subject.

Keywords

Legal HistoryToby MilsomEnglish law
Type
Articles
Information
The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 360 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2017 

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Footnotes

*

Regius Professor of Civil Law, University of Cambridge.

The Annual Lecture of the Cambridge Centre for English Legal History, 18 November 2016. The text is printed largely as delivered, with only minimal footnoting.

References

1 The Times, 30 March 2016.

2 Milsom, S.F.C., Historical Foundations of the Common Law (London 1969)Google Scholar. All citations are to Milsom's works except as attributed otherwise.

3 (1970) 4 I.J. 194.

4 [1970] C.L.J. 318.

5 Milsom, Historical Foundations, p. xiv.

6 Ibid., at p. xiv.

7 Novae Narrationes (Selden Society vol. 80).

8 Ibid., at p. xxxi.

9 Kiralfy, A., The Action on the Case (London 1951)Google Scholar.

10 Milsom, S.F.C., “Trespass from Henry III to Edward III” (1958) 74 L.Q.R. 195Google Scholar, at 407, 561.

11 Sayles, G.O., The Court of King's Bench in Law and History (London 1959), 20Google Scholar.

12 Offprint in Squire Law Library, Cambridge.

13 Milsom, S.F.C., “Not Doing Is No Trespass” [1954] C.L.J. 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See e.g. Fifoot, C.H.S., History and Sources of the Common Law: Tort and Contract (London 1949), 44–56 Google Scholar (critical of current theories).

15 Hall, G.D.G., “Some Early Writs of Trespass” (1957) 73 L.Q.R. 65Google Scholar.

16 Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench (Selden Society vol. 74), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.

17 Plucknett, T.F.T., “Case and the Statute of Westminster II” (1931) 31 Columbia L.R. 778Google Scholar; Dix, E.J., “The Origins of the Action of Trespass on the Case” (1947) 46 Yale L.J. 1142Google Scholar.

18 Landon, P., “The Action on the Case and the Statute of Westminster II” (1936) 52 L.Q.R. 68Google Scholar, at 78.

19 Williams, G., Liability for Animals (Cambridge 1939)Google Scholar.

20 Milsom, “Not Doing Is No Trespass”.

21 (1961) 77 L.Q.R. 257.

22 Offprint in Squire Law Library, Cambridge.

23 Ames, J.B., Lectures on Legal History (Cambridge 1913), 151Google Scholar (copy in possession of the author).

24 Pollock, F. and Maitland, F.W., Natural History of the Common Law (New York 2003), xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

25 Pollock, F. and Maitland, F.E.W., The History of English Law, 2nd ed. reissued (Cambridge 1968), xxxviii–xlvi Google Scholar; further in Milsom, Historical Foundations, pp. 103–05, 116–19; and Milsom, S.F.C., The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See most recently Hudson, J., Oxford History of the Laws of England, vol. 2 (Oxford 2012), 609–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, III.239d. Other, less clear examples may be Selden Society vol. 77 444 no. 64, 445 no. 65 (on which see Victoria County History, Huntingdonshire, 3.26–28), 452 no. 79.

28 Milsom, S.F.C., Historical Foundations, 2nd ed. (London 1981), 124–25Google Scholar; cf. 1st ed., pp. 107–8.

29 Meynial, E., “Notes sur la Formation de la Théorie du Domaine Divisé”, in Meynial, E. (ed.), Mélanges Fitting (Montpellier 1908), 2.409Google Scholar; Feenstra, R., “Les Origines du Dominium Utile chez les Glossateurs”, in Feenstra, R. (ed.), Fata Iuris Romani: Etudes d'Histoire du Droit (Leiden 1974), 215Google Scholar (with reference to further literature). For recent discussion in English, see Rüfner, T., “The Roman Concept of Ownership and the Medieval Doctrine of Dominium Utile ”, in Cairns, J. and Du Plessis, P. (eds.), The Creation of the Ius Commune: From Casus to Regula (Edinburgh 2010), 127Google Scholar. The opening pages of Meynial's article could as easily have been a summary of Milsom's arguments.

30 Quoted in Feenstra, “Les Origines”, p. 236. In the Summa Institutionum, quoted by Feenstra, “Les Origines”, p. 239, the vassal is listed in a group of holders of land less than owners, reflecting the proprietary dimension.

31 J.C. Lawson, “The Influence of Civilian and Canonist Learning on the English Royal Law 1154–1189”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015, 109–10. The link between mort d'amcestor and the Roman interdict quorum bonorum is made in Bracton, H., On the Laws and Customs of England, trans. Woodbine, G., ed. Thorne, S.E. (Cambridge MA 1968), 2.295Google Scholar.

32 Feenstra, “Les Origines”, pp. 245–48.

33 Milsom, S.F.C., “Reason in the Development of the Common Law” (1965) 81 L.Q.R. 496Google Scholar, at 500–02.

34 Simpson, A.W.B., “The Analysis of Legal Concepts” (1964) 80 L.Q.R. 535, at 545–48Google Scholar; Simpson, A.W.B., A History of the Common Law of Contract (Oxford 1975), 316–488 Google Scholar.

35 Milsom, Historical Foundations, p. xi.

36 Sir Baker, J., Baker and Milsom, Sources of English Legal History, 2nd ed. (Oxford 2010), 434Google Scholar.

37 Milsom, Natural History of the Common Law, pp. 1–23.

38 Ibid., at pp. xviii–xxi.

39 Birks, P., Introduction to the Law of Restitution (Oxford 1985)Google Scholar.

40 Milsom, Natural History of the Common Law, p. 76.

41 (1967) 17 U.T.L.J. 1.

42 Milsom, “Reason in the Development of the Common Law”, p. 510.