Counsel And Command in Early Modern English Thought

Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages through to the outbreak of the English civil war, and explores the ways in which law mediated and constituted social and economic relationships within the household, the community, and the state at all levels.

Both English language and English political life underwent unprecedented change in the sixteenth century, creating acute linguistic and legal crises that, in Elizabeth I's later years, intersected in the pioneering poetry of Edmund Spenser.