The law emprynted and Englysshed: The printing press as an agent of change in law and legal culture, 1475-1642

Abstract

This thesis takes the theory of Professor Elizabeth Eisenstein in her book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change and considers it within the context of the intellectual activity of the English legal profession in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The legal profession had developed a sophisticated educational process and practice based upon an oral\aural system along with the utilisation of manuscript materials, largely self-created. The printing press provided an alternative to this culture as printed law books - law reports, abridgements and treatises - became increasingly available and were used by lawyers and students. At the same time movements were afoot to discard the arcane language of the law and make printed legal materials available in English. A tension arose as the advantages of print were recognised by the authorities - the Church and the State. Those very qualities also turned out to be disadvantages as the authorities struggled to regulate the vastly increased flow of information that the printing press enabled. The law proved to be an unwieldy instrument in this tension. The legal works printed in the Sixteenth Century were primarily law reports and abridgements with a new style of law report becoming evident with the printing of Plowden's Commentaries and, in the Seventeenth Century, the works of Sir Edward Coke. Print enabled legal writers to concentrate upon principle rather than pleading and procedure. The Seventeenth Century saw a shift from printed reports to printed treatises and guide books for administrators and members of the “lower branch” of the legal profession. Legal information for the purposes of standardising procedures and for educational purposes as a supplement to a troubled traditional legal education system began to dominate. The study closes on the eve of the English Civil War - a time that saw for a short period the end of press licensing and the demise of Star Chamber which had played a significant albeit largely unsuccessful role in attempting to regulate the output of the printing press and the printing trade.