The essays in this volume reflect the wider concept of legal history - how legal processes fitted into the social and political life of the community, and how courts and other legal processes were used by contemporaries - rather than the more traditional but narrower study of internal procedural development interpretation. In doing so, they both aim to justify the study of legal history in its own right and to show how legal records, including those of a variety of central and local courts can be used to further the understanding of a range of social, commercial, popular and political history.
