The town courts of medieval England were both remarkably numerous and remarkably heterogeneous. As the introduction to this important volume explains, this simultaneously means that they represent one of our richest and most numerous sources for the social history of this period, but it also explains the limited extent to which historians have used them hitherto. To the extent that most of these records have been studied at all, it has almost invariably been within a local study or history of a single town, which means that the rich potential for comparison or generalization have been largely missed. The volume that Richard Goddard and Teresa Phipps have edited, which originated in a 2015 conference, aims squarely to address this gap.
Goddard and Phipps’ introduction offers a very useful survey of the potential and problems of using the records of town courts, introducing the scope of their jurisdiction, as well as introducing some of the specialized vocabulary necessary to understand them. Maryanne Kowaleski's opening chapter (perhaps confusingly also entitled ‘An introduction’) provides an absolutely invaluable survey of England's town courts, their origins, evolution and the format and survival of their records. Discussion of the evolution of record keeping should be especially important reading for economic historians seeking to draw conclusions from the trends in the volume of debt cases in these courts. Kowaleski's accompanying appendix of published transcriptions and translations, including many in obscure publications or recently scanned typescripts, is an incredibly useful addition, and will surely alert students and scholars to a far broader body of readily available material than many are aware of.
The core of the book comprises a rich mix of specific case-studies and surveys of the way in which courts can be employed to study particular issues comparatively, from a broad range of both established and early career researchers; all admirably embody the rallying call of the conclusion of Kowaleski's chapter: ‘Towards a social history of town courts’. Esther Liberman Cuenca's chapter on borough court cases as legal precedent – the omnipresent but rarely elaborated local ‘custom’ – is an impressively vibrant example of the way in which broad surveys of town courts can expand our understanding in a very different way to the traditional close study of an individual town. The next few chapters maintain a focus on the procedures of town courts, but from a variety of perspectives. Jeremy Goldberg's ‘Telling tales in court’ offers a cultural deconstruction of the formulation of cases in town courts, relating them to similar analyses of the language of cases in church courts. Meanwhile, Teresa Phipps’ chapter examines the ‘legal career’ of one woman in her local town court, very successfully ‘peopling’ the operation of these courts.
Christopher Dyer's chapter examines town courts from a different perspective, considering them in relation to rural manor courts and offering case-studies of urban manorial courts in towns established by Worcester Cathedral Priory. These might have been town courts, but they enforced seigneurial dues, and Dyer warns us to avoid ‘examining urban life through the narrow lens of the lord's documents’ (p. 116). The leet courts of Norwich, examined by Samantha Sagui were certainly civic and, she argues, played an important part in encouraging men to join the freedom. Jane Laughton's chapter on Chester surveys the complexity of the range of jurisdictions and courts operating within the city in the late medieval period, rather than examining a particular case, but she also concludes by emphasizing the extent to which they contributed to urban identity.
Alan Kissane's study of writ of right cases in the civic courts of Lincoln provides an intriguing example of the way in which detailed study of a relatively narrow case can sustain a much broader conclusion. He argues that the narrowing ranks of jurors in these cases provide evidence that the Black Death contributed to the emergence of urban oligarchy. Richard Goddard's chapter uses the toolkit of Social Network Analysis to construct a visual prosopography of late medieval Nottingham. While the claim that this is a first in medieval studies is overblown (e.g. Mike Burkhardt on the Hanseatic Bergenhandler (2009) and several Ph.D. thesis in the last 10 years), the paper provides a powerful case-study of the rich potential of town court records for this kind of analysis. Goddard makes clear the commercial centrality of certain individuals, including those who did not also participate in civic government. The final chapter, by Susan Maddock, also employs a prosopographical approach to shed more light upon the social context of the famous mystic Margery Kempe and her family using the records of the Lynn leet courts.
The volume explicitly aimed to emulate the influence of Razi and Smith's 1998 volume on manor courts, and it certainly achieves this aim of earning a place as the go-to introduction for interpreting these sources. The reader is both provided with a fuller and clearer explanation of the forms and operation of English town courts than has hitherto been easily available and given a broad range of examples of ways in which they can be interpreted. The volume is therefore ideal as a source of inspiration for both research students (and those planning postgraduate projects in the area), and all scholars interested in considering these courts and what they can tell us about late medieval urban societies in a comparative perspective. Indeed, if there is anything missing from this volume, I would suggest it would have benefited from a chapter considering these English courts in terms of comparison, for example with their well-studied cousins in the Low Countries or the Holy Roman Empire. The volume should certainly inspire such study in future, and should find a place on the shelves of all late medieval urban historians.
