Our penultimate chapter explores the extent to which the Tudor period saw a legal renaissance. It examines developments in the common law courts but also explores the development of new conciliar courts outside the common law, most notably star chamber and the court of equity, which were to prove influential. It also examines the further rise in the use and importance of statute law in this period, demonstrating that the Reformation statutes that split England from the Roman Catholic Church underscored the power of Parliamentary statute. Attention is also given to some developments in the common law courts during this period concerning the law of obligations (the development of the principle of consideration in contract law), property law (the development of the writ of ejectment that replaced the older land law writs and the origins of the law of trusts) and criminal law (the development of the distinction between murder and manslaughter).

This book seeks to tell you what you are unlikely to be told as part of your law course. It provides the ‘back stories’ of some of the main topics that you are likely to study during your degree. This book is designed to give you a head start and should mean that your study of the current law makes more sense. The chapters that follow tell some of the main stories of the history of English law. They focus on stories told about the origins of the common law, tracing elements of the development of English law from around the time of the Norman Conquest to the outbreak of Civil War in the Stuart period. This introductory chapter provides a run-through of some of the main arguments. It falls into three parts. The first part explains what the common law is and provides an introduction to Maitland, our chosen tour guide. The second part identifies seven reasons why a historical approach to law is needed. The third part of the chapter provides a brief guide to further reading and an outline of the chapters that follow, which will explore some of the stories of the common law.

This short afterword explores the development of the book and the meaning of its title. It provides the author’s reflections on the text and his acknowledgements.

This short prologue provides an introduction to the main features of the English law for those readers who are new to the study of law. It introduces our narrator, the Man of Law, as he explains some of the curious features of the common law.

This final chapter examines the early Stuart period in the years leading to the Civil War. This ending point, though necessarily arbitrary, has been chosen because of the entwinement between centralised royal power and the origins of the common law described in previous chapters means that it can be said that the common law had reached a level of maturity when it was able to survive for an extended period of time without a monarch. The Civil War further provides an appropriate conclusion to our survey given that it was the culmination of the conflicts between the king and his advisers, which date back centuries to Magna Carta and beyond. The chapter explores this final time period by exploring the work, behaviour and legacy of Sir Edward Coke, who has been likened to the Shakespeare of the law, and who is often seen as the bridge between the medieval and the modern laws.

Although we will be taking Maitland as our main tour guide, this chapter will explore the various storytellers by introducing the various perspectives. It will begin by distinguishing between what may be referred to as the intellectual history tradition in legal history, which explores the development of legal ideas within legal sources, and the social history tradition, which explores legal changes within their social context. It will demonstrate that both approaches complement one another and that, although Maitland is often regarded as a significant figure in the intellectual history tradition, some of his work can also be situated in the social history tradition. Further, it will be shown that Maitland’s work often demonstrated what may be styled a radical approach to legal history. The chapter will conclude by examining a number of radical perspectives that have been taken to the interaction between law and history, namely critical legal history, feminist legal history, critical race theory and my own call for a subversive legal history. These approaches are presented so that you can critique and apply insights from these perspectives as we re-tell and question the conventional stories of the genesis of the common law.

This chapter completes our examination of the long Plantagenet period, which culminated in the bloody War of the Roses. However, as the chapter title makes plain, the focus is on the impact that the deadly plague of this period had upon law and order. The chapter explores the different interpretations made of the importance of the Black Death and surveys developments of this period such as the origins of what we would today call employment law, significant increases in the effectiveness of the administration of justice chiefly through increased powers for justices of the peace and important developments in both law of obligations (exploring how actions on the case developed from the writ of trespass and how it further developed into the action on the case for assumpsit) and the criminal law (focusing on treason and murder).

Airstream mechanism refers to the mechanism by which air pressure or airflow is created in order to power speech production. The most basic and universal is the pulmonic airstream mechanism, whereby the lungs power an egressive airflow that produces both an airstream and a heightened air pressure when the vocal tract is blocked. The glottalic airstream mechanism involves vertical movement of the larynx with closed glottis, pushing air upward or drawing air in. This mechanism produces ejectives (glottalized consonants) and implosives. The velaric airstream mechanism produces clicks and is powered by tongue movements. Esophageal speech is produced by a controlled release of air from the esophagus (i.e., belching) in which the vibration of the esophageal sphincter substitutes for the vibration of the vocal folds.

Phonetics is the science explaining what happens as people talk -- that is to say, what happens as we produce the sounds of speech. Speech is a functional part of language, as language is most commonly used in human interaction. Language, in an abstract sense, is something common to all neurotypical humans. This abstract sense of “language” contrasts with specific languages, each one unique. The level of phonetic analysis of language is separate from, but overlapping with, phonology. Phonology focuses more on contrasts, whereas phonetics focuses more on differences. Phonetic variables can be used at very different levels of the grammar in different languages. Traunmüller distinguishes four types of information in speech: phonetic (linguistic), affective, personal, and transmittal. Dialect, register, and the hyperspeech--hypospeech continuum affect specific aspects of phonetic production in a given language. The science of phonetics uses terminology often consisting of ordinary words whose meanings are frequently different from the technical sense.

This chapter explores the most well-known English constitutional text and the period that followed its enactment. It explores how Magna Carta was a much more mundane and feudal document than its reputation suggests. It also examines how it was by no means the sole kingly concession during this period and discusses the origins of Parliament and how this affected the common law. The chapter falls into three sections. The first section discusses the importance and effect of Magna Carta. It explores what Magna Carta said and what effect it had upon feudalism, the operation of courts, governance and upon immigration. The second section will then explore the debate concerning the role the charter played in the development of Parliament, examining what Magna Carta said and also the importance of alter developments during this period. The final section will examine the impact of the charter upon the position of women.