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  • 20 - The books of the common law

  • from II - PROFESSIONS
  • Edited by Lotte Hellinga, J. B. Trapp
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    09 December 1999, pp 411-432

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with several aspects of common law during the medieval period in England such as law libraries, law cases and readings, law books and practice manuals, the law book trade including press and printing, and the legal profession itself. There were no common-law libraries comparable with those of the universities or large monasteries. The Inns of Court had nascent libraries around 1500, but few books in them, not all legal. Lawyers went on reporting current cases in manuscript, and some collections reaching back into the 1530s and 1540s were printed in later times. The first requirement for any common lawyer was a knowledge of the writs and forms of action whereby justice was distributed through the royal courts. Precedents of conveyancing and pleading were made by lawyers for their own use, the former largely by lowly practitioners, the latter (in the form of Latin books of entries) by prothonotaries and clerks.