The Profession of Ecclesiastical Lawyers

R. H. Helmholz is Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is the author of Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1975), Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge, 1990) and The Oxford History of the Laws of England: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (2004).

• Part I. The Profession Described: Introduction; 1. Law of the legal profession: advocates and proctors; 2. The education of ecclesiastical lawyers; 3. Ecclesiastical lawyers and the Protestant Reformation; 4. English ecclesiastical lawyers and the courts before the coming of the Civil War; Part II. The Profession Illustrated: 5. Roger of Worcester (d. 1179); 6. Gilbert Foliot (d. 1187); 7. William of Drogheda (d. 1245); 8. John de Burgh (d. 1398); 9. Adam Usk (d. 1430); 10. Richard Rudhale (d. 1476); 11. Daniel Dun (d. 1617); 12. Clement Colmore (d. 1619); 13. Arthur Duck (d. 1648); 14. William Somner (d. 1669); 15. Richard Zouche (d. 1661); 16. Leoline Jenkins (d. 1685); 17. Hugh Davis (d. 1694); 18. George Lee (d. 1758); 19. Thomas Bever (d. 1791); 20. Francis Dickins (d. 1755); 21. Arthur Browne (d. 1805); 22. Henry Charles Coote (d. 1865).

'This valuable book by one of our most eminent legal historians is the product of fifty years engagement with the history of the Church courts in England. It not only provides new insights into the careers of eighteen very different ecclesiastical lawyers over seven centuries but also (in the first half) prepares the way with an accessible and authoritative history of their profession.' John H. Baker, Downing Professor Emeritus of the Laws of England, University of Cambridge