Explores the impact of legal ideas and legal consciousness on early modern English society and culture.

1. Introduction Michael Lobban, Joanne Begiato and Adrian Green; 2. Christopher Brooks's contribution to early modern history Michael J. Braddick; 3. Law, law-consciousness and lawyers as constitutive of early modern England: Christopher W. Brooks's singular journey David Sugarman; 4. 'The hard rind of legal history': F. W. Maitland and the writing of late medieval and early modern British social history R. A. Houston; 5. Fountains of justice: James I, Charles I and equity R. W. Hoyle; 6. The Inns of Court, Renaissance, and the language of modernity Phil Withington; 7. The micro-spatial dynamics of litigation: the Chilvers Coton tithe dispute, Barrows vs. Archer (1657) Steve Hindle; 8. 'Law-mindedness': crowds, courts and popular knowledge of the law in early modern England John Walter; 9. Local laws, local principles: the paradoxes of local legal processes in early modern England Peter Rushton; 10. 'So now you are wed enough': clandestine unions in the north-west of England in the first half of the eighteenth century Joanne Begiato; 11. 'Blunderers and Blotters of the Law? The rise of conveyancing in the eighteenth century and long term socio-legal change' Craig Muldrew; 12. England and America: the role of the Justice of the Peace in County Durham, England and Richmond County, Virginia, in the eighteenth century Gwenda Morgan; 13. Law and architecture in early modern Durham Adrian Green; 14. Law and revolution: the seventeenth century English example C. W. Brooks; 15. Religion and law in early modern England C. W. Brooks.