These two books both concern the largely untold history of English law outside of the central common law courts. Both are based on an impressive array of archival and printed sources, as can be expected from books in this series. And both provide a readable, systematic introduction to the courts they consider, while making important arguments about the place of those courts in the multifaceted legal system of premodern England that challenge earlier assumptions.

R. B. Outhwaite's final, posthumous contribution to the history of the English ecclesiastical courts was shepherded through the press by Richard Helmholz. It is an elegant and learned account of an under-studied legal system, providing a much-needed general and synthetic history of ecclesiastical jurisdiction from pre-Reformation England through to its virtual abolition in the nineteenth century. Going beyond examinations of particular courts or particular categories of litigation in the church courts, Outhwaite makes available in a single volume an introduction to English ecclesiastical jurisdiction in its entirety that is sure to become a standard reference work for students of social and religious history as well as for legal historians.

Outhwaite begins with a survey of the institutional structure, the “graded hierarchy with overlapping functions” (2) of the English church courts. This two-chapter summary of the business and procedures of various ecclesiastical bodies, the relationships among these, and their relationships to secular law and institutions includes a useful historiographical survey of competing interpretations of the practical and ideological implications of the Reformation. These chapters concisely lay the foundation for the more specialist chapters that follow, expertly guiding the reader through the labyrinthine complexities of the medieval and early modern courts.

The rest of the volume can be divided roughly into two large sections. First, Outhwaite examines in detail the various topics that composed the bulk of premodern ecclesiastical litigation, surveying each of tithes (chap. 3), wills (chap. 4), defamation (chap. 5), marriage (chap. 6), and official prosecutions or “office causes” (chap. 7). This range of topics reinforces the importance of the ecclesiastical courts in premodern society and their potential to affect the lives of English people from all walks of life. In each case, Outhwaite focuses on the factors that determined whether ecclesiastical jurisdiction was exercised and the extent to which the church courts’ definitions of their own authority were shared by those over whom it was exercised, rather than on the substantive law that was applied. The remainder of the volume is an account of the shifting fortunes of the church courts, focusing on the decay of ecclesiastical jurisdiction after the seventeenth century and efforts to remedy and, finally, replace that decaying regime. Here, Outhwaite directs his attention primarily to the legislative means by which change was effected, although he does consider the wider social and economic developments that precipitated reform.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this work is the argument that litigation between private parties, rather than official prosecutions by ecclesiastical officials, composed most of the church courts’ business. Although much of the existing scholarship about the ecclesiastical courts is concerned primarily with the latter, especially the role of the “bawdy courts” in the enforcement of moral and religious standards of conduct, Outhwaite provides compelling evidence that the instance or party-driven jurisdiction of the courts was responsible for the bulk of their business. This highlights an understanding of the ecclesiastical courts in terms of private rather than public law. It also grounds the ecclesiastical courts in social as well as political or religious history. While the fortunes of the Church of England in the negotiation of relations between church and state are important for explanations of the expansions and contractions of the formal jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, the social and economic reasons for litigants to seek justice in one forum rather than another are essential to an analysis of the practical functioning of those courts. Although Outhwaite expressly defines his subject as the “formal rules and formal sanctions that were dispensed by courts of justice, operating in acknowledged systems of law” (1), the book demonstrates an acute awareness that institutional developments are the product of interactions with a broader social context.

Penny Tucker also has written an in-depth examination of an under-studied yet important jurisdiction. Tucker defines a London court as “a court which ‘belonged’ to the city, was peculiar to it, and over which it had control” (84). She distinguishes such courts from those “which were held in the city but which were not courts of the city” (84), in that they did not derive their authority from the city itself. This is an important distinction. As Tucker points out in her first chapter, London possessed unique jurisdictional capacities that went beyond those even of other chartered towns; this is clearly a study of the special place of the city's courts in English legal history, rather than of the interaction between local and central courts more generally.

Tucker begins by outlining the place of the London courts in the broader framework of the late medieval and early modern English legal system. Like all local courts, the city courts applied a mixture of local custom and the common law as defined by the central courts, using the latter whenever the former did not explicitly provide otherwise. Chapter 2 provides a more detailed discussion of the essential differences between the jurisdictions—the availability of distinctive remedies and the use of distinctive procedures, in the local courts. Chapter 3 introduces the three city courts on which the study focuses: the Hustings, the Mayor's Court, and the Sheriff's Court. The administrative structure of these courts and the procedures followed in each are examined at greater length in chapters 4 and 5, respectively.

Having surveyed the institutional framework of the London courts, Tucker then turns to the human faces of legal conflict. Chapter 6 is concerned mainly with the laypeople involved in court proceedings—the jurors and the litigants. Tucker pays particular attention to the relationship between economic status and participation in legal processes. Chapters 7 and 8 shift the focus to the increasingly professional participants in the London courts—the city officials responsible for the operation thereof and the lawyers who appeared therein. Seven appendices tabulate the available biographical information of these.

Tucker finishes with an evaluation of the justice available in the London courts. She concludes in chapter 9 that they were efficient and offered effective resolution to parties’ disputes, and in chapter 10 she concludes that they were relatively free from external interference. Indeed, she argues that, in addition to their local importance, the London courts played a significant part in the development of English “attitudes to the law” (372).

Tucker challenges prevailing understandings about the relationship between city courts and central legal institutions in two important ways. First, she sees the London courts as “part of the national administration of the law” (33), rather than as rivals competing against the common law for control of legal doctrine and practice. The increase in the volume of cases in the central courts was, therefore, a consequence of an overall increase in litigation and not evidence that the London courts suffered a corresponding decrease in use or importance. Second, she argues that the increasing similarities observable between the London and central courts after the sixteenth century were the result of city practices being adopted at Westminster, rather than the opposite as usually is assumed. She attributes this largely to the activity within the central bar and judiciary of those who cut their teeth in London legal offices. Both points deny the common view that the development of English law and legal administration was directed by those institutions most closely connected to the central government and spread outward only with difficulty to localities determined to defend their own authority and practices. Rather, she suggests that London, which institutionally was removed from the central courts despite its status as metropole rather than periphery, had a greater impact on other jurisdictions than generally is acknowledged.

These contributions to the history of the English courts are essential reading for the English legal historian. The insight they provide into courts that played vital roles in premodern society undoubtedly also will prove invaluable to English historians more generally.