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Throughout his early career, Sir Edward Coke joined many of his contemporaries in his concern about the uncertainty of the common law. Coke attributed this uncertainty to the ignorance and entrepreneurship of practitioners, litigants, and other users of legal power whose actions eroded confidence in the law. Working to limit their behaviours, Coke also simultaneously sought to strengthen royal authority and the Reformation settlement. Yet the tensions in his thought led him into conflict with James I, who had accepted many of the criticisms of the common law. Sir Edward Coke and the Reformation of the Laws reframes the origins of Coke's legal thought within the context of law reform and provides a new interpretation of his early career, the development of his legal thought, and the path from royalism to opposition in the turbulent decades leading up to the English civil wars.
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Si r E dwa r d Cok e a n d t h e Refor m at ion of t h e L aws
Throughout his early career, Sir Edward Coke joined many of his contemporaries in his concern about the uncertainty of the common law. Coke attributed this uncertainty to the ignorance and entrepreneurship of practitioners, litigants and other users of legal power whose actions eroded confidence in the law. Working to limit their behaviours, Coke also simultaneously sought to strengthen royal authority and the Reformation settlement. Yet the tensions in his thought led him into conflict with James I, who had accepted many of the criticisms of the common law. Sir Edward Coke and the Reformation of the Laws reframes the origins of Coke’s legal thought within the context of law reform and provides a new interpretation of his early career, the development of his legal thought, and the path from royalism to opposition in the turbulent decades leading up to the English civil wars. is an assistant professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, where he researches intellectual history and law in the early-modern Atlantic world. Dav i d C h a n S m i t h
Cambridge Studies in English Legal History Edited by J. H. Baker Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge Recent series titles include Sir Edward Coke and the Reformation of the Laws: Religion, Politics and Jurisprudence, 1578–1616 David Chan Smith Medieval English Conveyances John M. Kaye Marriage Law and Practices in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment Rebecca Probert The Rise and Fall of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, 1500–1860 R. B. Outhwaite Law Courts and Lawyers in the City of London, 1300–1550 Penny Tucker Legal Foundations of Tribunals in Nineteenth-Century England Chantal Stebbings Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England C. W. Brooks Roman Canon Law in Reformation England R. H. Helmholz Sir Henry Maine: A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence R. C. J. Cocks Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, 1798–1828 Henry J. Bourguignon The Early History of the Law of Bills and Notes: A Study of the Origins of Anglo-American Commercial Law James Steven Rogers The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages J. G. Bellamy William Sheppard, Cromwell’s Law Reformer Nancy L. Matthews
Si r E dwa r d C ok e a n d t h e Re for m at ion of t h e L aws Religion, Politics and Jurisprudence, 1578–1616
Dav i d Ch a n Sm i t h
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107069299 © David Chan Smith 2014 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and