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6 - Law reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

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Summary

The Rump's discussions of the army's reform programme were strongly influenced by the particular circumstances which gave rise to them, and which will be considered in the narrative section of this book. Before we turn to narrative, however, it will be well to consider some of the issues involved in the three main subjects on which the reform movement touched: the law, religion, and the relationship between parliament and electorate.

Few features of English society were subjected to such sustained and voluble criticism during the revolution as the legal system. The common law was predominantly the product of the medieval world, its character determined by the needs of a relatively static society. The increased social mobility of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the consequent growth in the tendency to litigation, placed novel strains on the common law. These it could meet only by sporadic, haphazard patterns of accretion which left its workings more unwieldy than ever. In many cases the old local courts had yielded jurisdiction to the central courts at Westminster, which had in turn to be supplemented by the expanding equity and prerogative courts; but all these courts developed their own abuses which many found intolerable. The abolition of the prerogative courts by the Long Parliament, although removing political grievances, increased the burdens which the common law already had to bear and to which the chaos of civil war could only add still further.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1974

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  • Law reform
  • Blair Worden
  • Book: The Rump Parliament 1648–53
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511560910.009
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  • Law reform
  • Blair Worden
  • Book: The Rump Parliament 1648–53
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511560910.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Law reform
  • Blair Worden
  • Book: The Rump Parliament 1648–53
  • Online publication: 29 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511560910.009
Available formats
×