The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits [Paperback]

Patrick Wormald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0631227407 | ISBN-13: 978-0631227403

This volume, the first of two comprising The Making of English Law, provides the first full-length account of the Old English law-codes for over eighty years, and the first that has ever been published in the English language.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This publication is an event, eagerly awaited and now exceeding expectation." Times Literary Supplement

"The Making of English Law is the century's finest monograph in English on medieval law. It is also essential reading for those interested in continental law, in kingship and in early medieval rule and in Anglo-Saxon education...(an) outstanding work on the history of law." English Historical Review

"The first volume of this long awaited work is a magisterial analysis of the manuscripts and texts of Anglo-Saxon laws." History

"Wormald's masterful analysis of early European legislation can and should be required reading for undergraduate and academic alike." Medium Ævum

"Just in time for the twenty-first century comes Patrick Wormald's long-anticipated synthesis of years of research and fresh thinking to provide both neophytes and those with more advanced knowledge a comprehensive view of the history of scholarship on the laws, their continental relations, their physical preservation and context, and their significance as evidence. Wormald is well qualified for this ambitious undertaking and, as he threads his way through problematic issues such as the relationships among Frankish legal codes, he provides us with a sense of territory that simply cannot be found anywhere else ... Through tables, cross-references, maps, and formidable indexes, Wormald has made the book accessible and usable to anyone who has an interest in the origins of English law ... we are unlikely to see a comparable treatment of the subject for years to come." Mary P. Richards, University of Delaware

"[Wormald] provides a wealth of primary material, often quoted verbatim in translation, and accompanied by twenty tables of structures, transmission, and contents of the codes, and the times and places of the councils which pronounced them ... Bound elegantly with copious footnotes, this is a monument to a scholar's lifetime work." Canadian Journal of History

"This book is a great gift to scholarship of many kinds ... A further volume is promised ... but, even if this were to stand alone, it would put us all in great debt to its author." Arbitration Journal

"In the last twenty years Wormald has been the most assiduous explorer in the area, his brilliant essays constituting individual expeditions into the territory. The Making of English Law represents the atlas ... Its breadth is astonishing; one moment describing the western European context of post-Roman law, the next subjecting nib widths to microscopic examination to identify the scribe who wrote quire signatures in English law's oldest manuscript. The results, great and small, change how we interpret preconquest law ... Wormald's massive and brilliant study truly for the first time puts us in a position to know the history of the origins and early development of English law." Speculum

From the Back Cover

This volume, the first of two comprising The Making of English Law, provides the first full-length account of the Old English law-codes for over eighty years, and the first that has ever been published in the English language. It is designed to be both an authoritative work of reference for scholars seeking enlightenment on particular legal manuscripts or texts and a coherent account of how the corpus of Old English law from the seventh to the twelfth century came to subsist and survive.

Part I opens with an account of the historians of early English law, including the immortal F. W. Maitland (1850-1906) and Felix Liebermann, author of the definitive edition of the law codes (1898-1916). It then provides the most detailed examination English of law and legislation on the European continent in the post-Roman era and of the earliest Anglo-Saxon legislators in the seventh century. This sets the scene for the law making of King Alfred and his successors.

As well as providing an authoritative account of Anglo-Saxon legislation this much-anticipated book opens new perspectives on the emergence of the English State. It will be welcomed as a landmark in the study of English law and government, and as an exploration of the problem of authority in a pre-modern society.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 574 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (May 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631227407
• ISBN-13: 978-0631227403
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,272,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE MAGNUM OPUS, May 28, 2011

By 

Stephen Cooper (South Yorkshire, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, Vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits (Paperback)

There is nothing quite like this book. There is a footnote in it which must be one of the longest in existence. It concerns the fate of the German Felix Liebermann (1851-1925), whose Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (`The Laws of the Anglo-Saxons'), published in 1903, was universally admired, but whose academic career was ruined by the outbreak of the First World War. The fact that this footnote is the most entertaining passage in the book says a lot. Unfortunately, it is not otherwise a very `accessible' work. In fact it is almost unreadable - except by the specialist - unless the reader is aware of the subtext.

Patrick Wormald, who died prematurely in 2004, was a brilliant scholar, teacher and essayist. In 1969, he was awarded a `congratulatory' first class honours degree, and was elected as a prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; but he struggled to complete the great book which he worked on for almost thirty years. The Making of English Law (1999) is only the first volume of it and the second was never completed. Moreover, volume I was only ever intended to be journeyman's work: it was volume II which was to have been the masterpiece.

Patrick was a devout Roman Catholic and he had a deep admiration, one might almost say love, for the Anglo-Saxons, which he certainly did not feel for the Normans. In his view, there were 600 years of proud English history before the Nakba of 1066 - years when a society had emerged from barbarism by its own efforts, though with much help from Rome and Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons were the guardians of the Faith; but, in the long night which descended after the Romans withdrew, they also kept the flame of civilisation burning. In the eighth century they produced the best historian of the early Middle Ages in the Venerable Bede. They helped to convert the Germans to Christianity and contributed to the high level of culture to be found at the court of Charlemagne. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they fought off a further wave of Viking barbarians and producing a brilliant vernacular literature. Most importantly, they created a unified kingdom, ruled by codes of law and dedicated to the worship of Christ. In the twelfth century, the kingdom of England was one of the best-governed states in Western Europe because Anglo-Saxon England had been well governed for centuries: Henry II built on foundations laid by Alfred the Great.

I am sure this is what Patrick wanted to say; and if one bears this subtext in mind, volume I of the magnum opus becomes readable, indeed profound. As it is, it is still the indispensable guide to the Anglo-Saxon law codes, the only possible companion to Liebermann's Die Gesezte der Angelsachsen and it will still be read in a hundred years.

Stephen Cooper