Thomas J. McSweeney

Creating a Literature for the King's Courts in the Later Thirteenth Century: Hengham Magna, Fet Asaver, and Bracton

ABSTRACT The early common law produced a rich literature. This article examines two of the most popular legal treatises of the second half of the thirteenth century, Hengham Magna and Fet Asaver. It has long been recognized that these two treatises bear some relationship to each other. This article will attempt to establish that relationship, arguing that Hengham Magna and Fet Asaver were written by different people; that Fet Asaver borrows from Hengham Magna; and that the authors of both texts had independent access to the Bracton treatise. The article concludes by suggesting a new way to think about the legal literature of the later thirteenth century. It suggests that Hengham Magna and Fet Asaver do not represent a dramatic break with the earlier literature of the common law, as some scholars have suggested. They may instead represent an evolution of that literature to serve the needs of the practising bar.

Between England and France: A Cross-Channel Legal Culture in the Late Thirteenth Century

This chapter looks at the culture of legal treatise-writing as evidence that England and Normandy shared a common way of talking and writing about law, which they did not share with the rest of France, across the divide of 1204. The developments in legal writing that we see in English treatises decades after the Capetian conquest are mirrored in their Norman counterparts, suggesting that England and Normandy maintained contacts in the legal sphere for most of the thirteenth century. These legal treatises show us that, although separated politically, England and Normandy were part of a cross-Channel legal culture. The chapter treats another constitutional implication of Bracton , one that pervades the whole of the treatise. The Bracton author imports the substance of the Roman law of possession and property into his discussion of seisin and right. Keywords: Bracton ; cross-Channel legal culture; England; France; Normandy; Roman law; thirteenth century