The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts
1590–1640

Comprehensive study of the early modern inns of court, based on original sources, now revised and updated with recent scholarship.

Wilfrid R. Prest (Author)

9781108845380, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

234 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.64 kg

The Tudor and Stuart inns of court were major centres of learning and literature, as well as professional associations of practising lawyers. This book sketches the evolution of the inns from their medieval origins and traces the dramatic impact of the societies' rapid expansion through the Elizabethan era and beyond. Prest's comprehensive study based on original sources surveys the structure and functions of the inns, outlining key aspects, from tensions between junior and senior members to the nature and effectiveness of their educational role. Its lively prose locates the inns within the cultural, political, religious, and social context of Shakespearean and pre-civil war England. This corrected and revised second edition of a classic work addresses recent scholarship on the early modern inns of court and includes a new chapter introducing the book to twenty-first-century readers.

1. Dimensions
2. The quality of membership
3. Ranks of membership
4. Administration and government
5. Discipline and disorder
6. Learning the law
7. Legal and liberal education
8. Papists
9. Preachers, puritans and the religion of lawyers
10. The Inns of Court and the English revolution.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Law [L]