Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

chapter seven The Legal Ordering of ‘the State of the Realm’ This chapteris concerned with the ways ‘the state of the realm’ cam ...

precisely in order to integrate the new legislation of princes with the legal traditions of peoples.^3 From Roman times ‘decrees ...

Before the thirteenth century the kings of England and France made law not so much by explicit acts of legislation as by the fra ...

often bad, particularly the consuetudines, the customary liberties and exactions, of the feudal aristocracy.^13 Yet ‘custom’ was ...

German kingdom and ‘instituted by emperors’, who also confirmed to bishops ‘the rule and customs and law’ of cathedral cities.^2 ...

to holy Mother Church and to the lord king and the barons of his realm which were not in that document’.^26 In 1195 King Richard ...

not true laws which were framed ‘by the Edicts of Princes or [even] by Councils of Estates’ and ‘imposed upon the Subject before ...

to successive kings for confirmation) had yielded place under Philip Augustus, Louis VIII, and Louis IX to ‘constitutions’, ‘ord ...

Merton in 1236. It has been suggested that the famous addicionesto Bractonmay be citations of old cases removed from the origina ...

seems in fact to incorporate one of the statutes which Robert I ordi- navit, condidit et stabilivit‘in full parliament’ at Scone ...

The law of land-holding The actaof kings from Frankish times and the stabilimentaand statutes of the thirteenth century ordered ...

monasteries and their lands under his protection; established (literally ‘stabilized’) liberties, in one case of ‘the bishop of ...

‘Feudalism’ was a vital stage in the development of a law of property, because it spread the conditional holding of land, and ge ...

benefices (opulenta beneficia) that induced men to endure toil and danger to defend them’.^65 ‘Fief’, ‘fee’, seems to have preva ...

the early days of the duchy, saw ‘barely literate priests of Danish stock’ themselves ‘bearing arms and holding lay fees by mili ...

prized the extra control the feudal relationship gave him over the nobility both ecclesiastical and lay: Henry the Lion was decl ...

from doing homage to the abbey.^82 Hierarchies of land-holding could reinforce hierarchies of authority, as when the duke of Aqu ...

feodum et homagium ligium. A good number of parlement’s judgments were enforcements of the king’s rights to homage and jurisdict ...

generally prized as an economic asset, and the fief was evolving into the ‘fee simple’, the most unconditional form of property ...

ordered him to return a church to the abbot of Hulme’s fee, if the abbot could show that it had been transferred to the fee of a ...