Book Review

Scholars interested in the history of English law will be indebted to John Hudson for organizing the symposium to celebrate the centenary of Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law and for editing the papers and making them available. This book is a collection of ten essays that focus on Maitland's writings because Pollock's contributions were minimal.	1
Hudson provides a list of commonly used abbreviations, a detailed index, and a biographical sketch for each contributor. The authors include extensive documentation with their essays, and Mark Philpott provides a bibliography of Maitland's publications.	2
As with any collection of papers by different writers, the reviewer is confronted with the daunting task of analyzing varied topics. Hudson states that the authors have examined "Maitland's working methods and style; his reaction to his predecessors and contemporaries; the sources he used and did not use; his concentration on England as opposed to the wider assemblages of lands ruled by the kings of England. And as Maitland would have wished, they have also analysed topics and issues to which he devoted only limited attention" (ix).	3
Patrick Wormald and John Hudson consider Maitland's interpretation of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman law. Wormald mentions that Pollock wrote the Anglo-Saxon chapter because Maitland knew little about this period or, for that matter, about the Norman period. Wormald and Hudson are at pains to demonstrate that Anglo-Saxon legal traditions survived the Conquest and that legal innovations introduced from the continent took hold gradually.	4
Sir James Holt begins his chapter by evaluating Maitland's account of Glanvill and wonders how he dealt with the subject with little material at hand. Holt then discusses the Cambridge project of collecting the acta of the early Angevins and analyzes some of these in the context of England and the Angevin empire, concluding that there was no unified empire and that most acta relate to England.	5
Paul Brand offers a reinterpretation of Bracton. He concludes that at best Bracton wrote only portions of the treatise and that most of it was written earlier than Maitland assumed. Brand also rejects Maitland's notion that Bracton was an important judicial official.	6
Stephen White and Henry Summerson address Maitland's interpretation of family and criminal law. With his emphasis on the individual, Maitland dismissed the family as an important legal entity; however, White effectively refutes this argument. Likewise, Summerson challenges Maitland's view on the effectiveness of outlawry and abjuration as punishment for crimes. Summerson points out that Maitland the lawyer was influenced by nineteenth-century concepts of criminal punishment.	7
R. H. Helmholz and Paul Hyams take up matters neglected by Maitland. Helmholz deals with Roman and Canon law (learned law) while Hyams considers the standing at law of women, Jews, villeins, homosexuals, and heretics. Helmholz, who admits to modifying his views about the impact of learned law in England, recognizes that Maitland was aware of its influence in ecclesiastical matters but neglected the subject because he was uncomfortable with it. Helmholz claims that learned law stimulated English lawyers to develop their own legal system and that in England interest in learned law was on the wane by the time of Bracton.	8
Hyams believes that Maitland was disinterested in Jews and women and the legal disadvantages and hardships they endured and explains Maitland's views as a reflection of attitudes prevalent during his lifetime. Maitland had a better understanding for the legal status of villeins and sympathized with heretics because of his own beliefs; however, he touched only briefly on the status of homosexuals because this was not a proper subject for Victorians.	9
Maitland considered the legal concept of the crown but dealt with it in a post-thirteenth-century context and rejected the term as imprecise. George Garnett traces the term's meaning prior to the thirteenth century. He argues that for the Anglo-Saxons "crown" referred to the physical object but that the definition gradually changed to an abstraction after the Conquest. This change of meaning stemmed from two different sources that ran parallel in time.	10
S. F. C. Milsom tries to provide some synthesis and review of the essays. He endeavors to explain how and why historians and lawyers differ in their approaches to legal history. Perhaps Milsom should have avoided this topic, for he risks convincing historians that lawyers should not write history.	11
Throughout this work the reader is made aware that Maitland's study has serious weaknesses. He was influenced by the interests and prejudices of his time; he lacked knowledge about or cared little about numerous issues; he lacked many of the scholarly resources available today and had to rely on very old editions of Glanvill and Bracton. In spite of these failings, time and again, the authors praise Maitland for his pioneering and significant contributions to the study of English legal history.	12
Although written well and documented fully, these essays, unfortunately, will have little appeal except to those versed in medieval English legal history and very familiar with Maitland's writings. These problems could have been remedied had the editor adhered to his plan to have some discussion about Maitland in his nineteenth-century setting and to relate him to his contemporary English and continental scholars. To be fair, the authors make occasional references to these subjects. The study of English constitutional and legal history flourished in Maitland's time as in no other, and it would have been a valuable addition to this collection to have included an evaluation of Maitland in this context.	13
Readers will find grounds to disagree with some of the authors' approaches to their subjects and their conclusions. Nevertheless, readers will be impressed with the quality of scholarship demonstrated by the authors. Perhaps these essays will stimulate renewed interest in medieval legal history as well as in Maitland and his contributions to the study.	14
Boyd Breslow Florida Atlantic University

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