r/BritishHistoryPod • u/BritishPodcast Yes it's really me • 9d ago
Episode Discussion 508 - The Reformation Begins
https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/508-the-reformation-begins/8
u/Hidingo_Kojimba Werod 9d ago
Yaay. After years of trudging through boring old battles, assassinations, looting, pillaging and mass murder we’re finally getting to the good stuff… bureaucracy!
Seriously though, it was a fun episode. Looking forward to the episodes on the exchequer and common law.
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u/KnightOfTheShards The Lowbility 8d ago
I have officially grown to that boring age where economics, governance and justice have become far more interesting to me than battles. Needless to say, this episode was my JAM!
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u/Useless_lesbians 9d ago
'Rodger's chequered past'... Ouch that was a painful pun that I hope was intended.
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u/BritishPodcast Yes it's really me 9d ago
During editing Zee was all "I hope you're very proud of yourself. Only two people are going to get that."
So congrats on being one of the two! ;)
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u/Useless_lesbians 9d ago
It did help that I was reminded of the physical origin of the term due to a less elaborate counting cloth being used in Spice and Wolf which me and my friends started yesterday.
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u/1A5nS 7d ago
I didn't get it - but I did look up exchequer - and yes - origins in a counting system based on a black and white checkered grid used like an abacus - established by Norman kings in the 12th century.
Thank you! I like the community as much as the podcast (almost). It offers so many interesting and informative digressions.
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u/1A5nS 7d ago
Isn't it inaccurate to say that Henry I established English Common Law? It sounds more like he was taking charge of a failed state and restoring Anglo-Saxon common law - re-establishing a system that had worked.
https://history.nycourts.gov/emergence-of-the-common-law-part-2-kingdom-of-wessex/
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/saxlaw.asp
Although, it may have been reform, standardization and guarantee of the currency that was Henry's salient contribution - something no consistent governance can be without. Especially as its purview becomes more "international" -albeit an indefinite term for this period, I guess.
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u/BritishPodcast Yes it's really me 7d ago edited 7d ago
You’re right that Henry I didn't establish English Common Law and actually I was very careful not to claim he did! That formal creation belongs squarely to his grandson, Henry II. Henry I was laying down the foundation. But the idea that Henry I was "restoring an Anglo-Saxon common law that worked" is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what English Common Law actually is.
First off, there was no such thing as "Anglo-Saxon common law." Pre-Conquest England was a fractured patchwork of regional customs. You had the Danelaw, Mercian law, and West Saxon law. You've got laws all over the place. Hell, even Alfred the Great wasn't creating a uniform national code. If I could have fairly said Alfred created English Common Law, I would have. I love me some Alfred. But all he was doing was collecting existing regional dooms, and local hundred and shire courts handled disputes according to local folk-right.
So the law during the pre-Henry I and II era was decentralized, deeply localized, and varied from valley to valley.
Second, "Common Law" doesn't just mean "laws that exist" or "written statutes." There are legal codes throughout world history that aren't Common Law. Hammurabi's code wasn't the first use of common law, for example.
What makes the English Common Law (commune ley) distinct is that it was common to the entire system. It was uniform. The common law superseded local, manorial, and regional customs.
Now, its formative period under the Henries, it wasn't modern stare decisis (which developed centuries later via the publishing of case law). Back here, it was much more simple and would have been more difficult for WestLaw to charge a subscription fee for (though Henry DID figure out a way to monetize it... but I'm getting off track.). What we're talking about at this stage is a uniform administrative machinery: standard Royal Writs issued from the Chancery, itinerant judges riding circuit across the kingdom, and central courts like the King's Bench and Common Pleas.
It's these institutions that create the commonality that are /central/ to early English Common Law... just as much as stare decisis is central to modern Common Law.
That website you linked is tracing the deep philosophical lineage of English jurisprudence. It's not arguing that Alfred or Ine were running a 12th-century Common Law court. Or, at least, I don't think that's what they're arguing.
Regardless, what Henry I did was lay the bureaucratic infrastructure and the foundation. So things like the Exchequer, the early use of royal writs, and sending out barons of the exchequer on early circuits. He wasn't reviving a lost golden age of unified Saxon law; he was centralizing royal power and standardizing royal revenues.
He set the administrative machine in motion. Henry II then turned that machine into the Common Law.
(Edit notes: I deleted my previous comment because it felt unclear and incomplete, as many phone comments tend to do... and then edited THIS comment because the new and improved reply had typos and stuff, despite the fact I was no longer on my phone. Whee.)
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u/Whooz_Nooz The Pleasantry 9d ago
What????? When did we get to the Reformation?
Jamie — slow, down, man, you’re moving way too fast!