| Book Review | Law and History Review, 26.3

Book Review

Penny Tucker, Law Courts and Lawyers in the City of London, 1300–1550, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 424. $100 (ISBN 978-0-521-86668-2).

Among English legal historians, Penny Tucker is known as the expert on the London courts. She has published a series of ground-breaking articles on that subject, and this book is a culmination of over a decade of work. It is essential reading for everyone using London court records, whether their interest is political, legal, or social history.

Writing the history of London's courts is an especially difficult task, because so few records survive. Fortunately, because of the close interaction between the London courts and the royal courts in Westminster, much can be learned from records of the latter. Nevertheless, finding the relevant cases requires thousands of hours of searching, and analyzing the material requires an understanding of the unrepresentative nature of cases that made their way from London to Westminster.

The first chapter places London courts in their political and legal context. London, by far the largest and most important commercial city in medieval England, enjoyed considerable autonomy and was governed by a progressively more open elite of "freemen." Royal charters granted London courts exclusive jurisdiction over most cases involving London freemen, except those concerning property outside of London. In addition, London was allowed to retain and develop its own customs.

The second chapter analyzes differences between London custom and the common law. Perhaps most important, all land in London was freehold held directly from the king for "one penny socage a year." That is, most of the complications of feudal tenure were not applicable, and property could be disposed of by will well before the 1540 Statute of Wills extended that right more generally. Another significant difference was that defendants in most civil actions could be arrested to assure their appearance in court—a rather drastic measure, but one which forcefully addressed a serious problem facing nearly all medieval courts.

The third chapter analyzes the history and jurisdiction of the three principal London courts—the Court of Hustings, the Mayor's Court, and the Sheriff's Court. It also contains a fascinating discussion of the way in which the London courts were considered royal courts. Not only did the king assert that London's jurisdiction was delegated to it by the king, but the London courts seem to have accepted this status.

Chapters 4 and 5 describe the operation of the courts in detail—where and when they sat, the volume of litigation, and court procedures. The last part of Chapter 5 contains a tantalizing discussion of cases determined according to conscience or merchant law. These cases seem to have been resolved quite informally, without set procedures and frequently without lawyers. Some merchant law cases, however, were heard in accordance with ordinary, more formal procedures. Perhaps future work, by the author or others, will dig deeper into this important topic.

Chapters 6 through 8 discuss the personnel of the courts—judges, jurors, litigants, lawyers, and law officers. These chapters represent the closest this book gets to social history—tracing the social background and career paths of people involved in London's courts. An especially important theme is the strong interconnection between the central royal courts in Westminster and the London courts. Judges and lawyers, especially, went back and forth between the two.

Chapter 9 analyzes the effectiveness of London's courts by looking at speed, cost, and ethical standards. There were wide variations among the courts, with the Hustings being much slower and more expensive. Tucker analyzes the various allegations of misconduct lodged against judges, lawyers, and jurors. She sensibly concludes that many specific allegations probably had merit, but that more general charges of widespread error or corruption are probably unfounded.

The last chapter examines the mutual influence of the London courts and central royal courts. The most interesting part is the discussion of the possibility that London court practices were models for common law innovations, including the possessory assizes, the writ cessavit, the expansion of assumpsit actions after the Black Death, the use of the English language for pleading, paper pleadings, and the expansion of bill procedure. The possibility that London courts influenced the central common law courts is a plausible interpretation in these instances, because London practice seems to have predated their Westminster adoption, and because there were judges, lawyers, and court officials in the central courts who had experience with London procedures. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to be certain whether there was borrowing or independent innovation.

Because of the fragmentary nature of the surviving records and its special procedures, scholars have generally neglected London's courts. Nevertheless, the commercial dominance of the city and the near exclusive jurisdiction possessed by its courts mean that this neglect has left unexplored important aspects of the development of English law, especially commercial law. Penny Tucker's book provides a solid foundation and an indispensable guide for the many scholars who one hopes will take up the challenge.

Daniel Klerman

USC Law School

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