Inter Magnalia Fleetwoodi: Re-examining William Fleetwood in Light of the Late-Sixteenth Century Legal Treatise, A Discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell
| dc.contributor.advisor | Brasington, Bruce | |
| dc.creator | Todd, Paul | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-02-20T21:39:25Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-02-20T21:39:25Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2018-12 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019-01-28 | |
| dc.date.submitted | December 2018 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2019-02-20T21:39:26Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | In The Reinvention of Magna Carta (2017), Sir John Baker argues for William Fleetwood’s authorship of A Discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell (c. 1580s). Examining A Discourse and other writings, I wish to qualify two points Baker makes about Fleetwood: that his use of chapter 29 in legal argument was “distinctly old-fashioned,” and that “in none of Fleetwood’s works is there a discernible theme of constitutional monarchy.” I do not entirely dispute Baker’s first point, but he does not consider the full implications of Fleetwood’s use of chapter 29 in A Discourse and in his argument for the Case of the Tallow Chandlers (1583). While Fleetwood sometimes exalted the royal prerogative, as Baker does point out, I argue here that he asserted its limitations and restraint by parliamentary authority. To Baker, Fleetwood is a transitionary figure. While he analyzed, applied, and advocated Magna Carta more than his contemporaries did, he remained steeped in the late-medieval learning of the inns of court and did not “reinvent” Magna Carta as the Jacobean lawyers would soon do. Despite this traditionalism, I argue that Fleetwood’s approach to chapter 29 in some ways anticipated how Jacobean lawyers interpreted that statute, and in whose thinking there was a strong sense of the liberty and protection of the subject. With its timely publication in 1643, decades after its original composition, I conclude that A Discourse also anticipated seventeenth century arguments for the restriction of royal power. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/11310/202 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.subject | Early Modern England | |
| dc.subject | Elizabethan era | |
| dc.subject | early Stuart period | |
| dc.subject | English law | |
| dc.subject | London | |
| dc.subject | Bridewell | |
| dc.subject | charter | |
| dc.subject | commission | |
| dc.subject | Magna Carta | |
| dc.subject | Fleetwood | |
| dc.subject | Bacon | |
| dc.title | Inter Magnalia Fleetwoodi: Re-examining William Fleetwood in Light of the Late-Sixteenth Century Legal Treatise, A Discourse upon the Commission of Bridewell | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| thesis.degree.department | History | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | History | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | West Texas A&M University | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | |
| thesis.degree.name | M. A. |