Afterword: three letters

The essays consider issues of affect and emotion in terms of three early English letters - by Chaucer, the Paston family, and Henry VIII - in order to consider issues of the personal and the literary. It also comments on the volume of essays as a whole, and consider the field of the history of emotions and affect studies

De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae

The thirteenth-century Latin legal treatise best known as Bracton is now thought to be the work of several hands, and Henry de Bracton (d.1268) to have been only the last of these. Work began on it in the 1230s and largely ceased in the early 1250s, but the treatise - an ambitious survey of English law - was never finished. Between 1878 and 1883, the scholar and jurist Sir Travers Twiss (1809–97) edited and published this work in six volumes for the Rolls Series. His text was mainly based on the first printed edition of 1569. Although he provided the first English translation of Bracton, Twiss's work has been criticised and since superseded. Volume 4 contains the second part of Book 4. It covers the assizes of darrein presentment, mort d'ancestor and utrum, and related actions and litigation about dower.</jats:p

Bracton’s Note Book

Henry of Bracton (or Bratton) (c. 1210–1268) was a jurist who worked as a Justice of Assize in the south-west of England, and was the author of the first systematic discussion of English common law. The manuscripts which form Bracton's Note Book were discovered in the British Museum in 1884 by Vinogradoff, and were edited in three volumes in 1887 by Maitland. These volumes contain a collection of over 2,000 law cases from the thirteenth century, each with a description of how the law should be applied to the particular circumstances of each case. This is the first example of case law in English legal writing, and its usefulness as a record of legal precedent probably led to the creation of Year Rolls (official records of court cases) from 1268. Volume 2 contains the texts of Pleas in the Bench from 1218 to 1234.</jats:p

Bracton’s Note Book

Henry of Bracton (or Bratton) (c. 1210–1268) was a jurist who worked as a Justice of Assize in the south-west of England, and was the author of the first systematic discussion of English common law. The manuscripts which form Bracton's Note Book were discovered in the British Museum in 1884 by Vinogradoff, and were edited in three volumes in 1887 by Maitland. These volumes contain a collection of over 2,000 lawsuits from the thirteenth century, each with a description of how the law should be applied to the particular circumstances of each case. This is the first example of case law in English legal writing, and its usefulness as a record of legal precedent probably led to the creation of Year Rolls (official records of court cases) from 1268. Volume 3 contains the texts of Pleas in the Bench and before the King from 1224 to 1240.</jats:p