Baker and Milsom Sources of English Legal History

• The definitive source book on the development of the common law of persons, obligations, and property - an essential reference point for all legal historians or comparative lawyers engaged in this history of the common law
• Translates the sources into modern, accessible English, making the primary materials accessible to students of legal history
• The sources themselves offer a rich resource for historians of English society, government, and economics, revealing the operation of the courts in personal and economic disputes

New to this edition

• Includes new sources discovered since the first edition published in 1986
• Comprehensively revised and updated in light of recent scholarship, including corrections to some sources in light of law reports that were previously unavailable

Readership: Students and scholars of legal history and the English legal system. Historians and students working on the development of the common law outside England. English historians specializing in the history of government, or social and economic historians.

John Baker, Downing Professor of the Laws of England and Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge

Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
1: Tenure: services and incidents
2: Actions concerning land
3: Family interests and settlements at common law
4: Uses, wills, and trusts
5: Executory interests under the Statute of Uses
6: The term of years
7: Copyhold
8: Debt
9: Detinue
10: Covenant
11: Account
12: Trespass
13: Trespass on the case
14: Assumpsit for misfeasance
15: Assumpsit for nonfeasance
16: Assumpsit in lieu of debt
17: Assumpsit against executors for money
18: Various developments of the money counts
19: Consideration and privity
20: Actions on the case for deceit
21: Actions on the case for conversion
22: Actions on the case for negligence
23: Actions on the case for nuisance
24: Actions on the case for various kinds of economic loss
25: Actions on the case for defamation
Index