Royal Justice and the Making of the Tudor Commonwealth, 1485–1547 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History) - Softcover

Flannigan, Laura

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009371355 ISBN 13: 9781009371353

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

The dawn of the Tudor regime is one of most recognisable periods of English history. Yet the focus on its monarchs' private lives and ministers' constitutional reforms creates the impression that this age's major developments were isolated to halls of power, far removed from the wider populace. This book presents a more holistic vision of politics and society in late medieval and early modern England. Delving into the rich but little-studied archive of the royal Court of Requests, it reconstructs collaborations between sovereigns and subjects on the formulation of an important governmental ideal: justice. Examining the institutional and social dimensions of this point of contact, this study places ordinary people, their knowledge and demands at the heart of a judicial revolution unfolding within the governments of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Yet it also demonstrates that directing extraordinary royal justice into ordinary procedures created as many problems as it solved.

About this title

About the Author

Laura Flannigan is a researcher at the University of Oxford. She has published several articles in Law and History Review and Historical Research, and was awarded the Sir John Neale Essay Prize in 2020. Her volume on the Court of Requests archive is forthcoming (List and Index Society, 2023).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009371355
• ISBN 13: 9781009371353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 322