The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century

by J. G. A. Pocock

• ISBN13: 9780521316439
• ISBN10: 052131643X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-04-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Professor Pocock's subject is how the seventeenth century looked at its own past. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most important modes of studying the past was the study of the law - the historical outlook which arose in each nation was in part the product of its law, and therefore, in turn of its history. In clarifying the relation of the historical outlook of seventeenth-century Englishmen to the study of law, and pointing out its political implication, Pocock shows how history's ground was laid for a more philosophical approach in the eighteenth century.

Table of Contents

Preface

Preface to the first edition

Part I. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: 1. Introductory: the French prelude to modern historiography

2. The common-law mind: custom and the immemorial

3. The common-law mind: the absence of a basis of comparison

4. The discovery of feudalism: French and Scottish historians

5. The discovery of feudalism: Sir Henry Spelman

6. Interregnum: the Oceana of James Harrington

7. Interregnum: the first royalist reaction and the response of Sir Matthew Hale

8. The Brady controversy

9. Conclusion: 1688 in the history of historiography

Part II. The Ancient Constitution Revisited: A Retrospect from 1986: 10. Historiography and common law

11. Civil War and interregnum

12. Restoration, revolution and oligarchy

Index.