return to the political theorists of the late medieval and early modern
period who, in a climate of war and religious conflict, developed the
legally defined ‘state of the king and the kingdom’ into a more modern
concept of the State.
The study focuses on the systems of laws and courts in the kingdoms
of France and England. Their foundations in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon
justice (Chapter 2) might appear to have been shaken by the franchisal
courts of feudal lords and communes of townsmen (Chapter 3), but
French and English kings succeeded in integrating these into centralized
polities (Chapter 5). Unlike the Italian cities on the one hand and the
empire on the other France and England were both large enough to
demand, and small enough to make possible, the centralized adminis-
tration from which the notion of the State could develop. The ‘orga-
nized peace’ which was the bed-rock of judicial systems manifested itself
most impressively in the German Landfrieden, but within an unwieldy
empire these led to the crystallization of Kleinstaaterei(Chapter 4)
rather than a pan-German state.
Politically, the state was a far more potent idea than the nation,
because it signified a structure, which demanded continual criticism and
reform. Chapter 6 shows how the notion of ‘the state of the kingdom’
was used by the critics of royal justice in the English parliament and
French estates general (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7 the state in England
and France is described as a legislatively ordered structure of ‘estates’,
each estate defined by its legal rights and duties. The vicissitudes and
understanding of the late medieval ‘monarchical state’ are the subject of
Chapter 8, and the final chapter shows the continuity of the word and
concept from a medieval and legal context into the politics of ‘the
modern state’ (Chapter 9).
My thanks are due to the Universities of Liverpool and Edinburgh for
appointing me to honorary fellowships on my retirement from full-time
teaching, to the ‘special collections’ departments of the libraries of both
universities, and above all to my wife Marjorie, without whose support
and infinite patience the book would never have been completed.
A.H.
Edinburgh
January, 2001
vi Preface