The Royal Prerogative and the Learning of the Inns of Court

Abstract

Between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century Prerogativa Regis, a central text of fiscal feudalism, was introduced into the curriculum of the Inns of Court, developed, and then abandoned. This 2003 book argues that while lawyers often turned their attention to the text when political and financial issues brought it to the fore, they sought to maintain an intellectual consistency and coherence in the law. Discussions of both substance and procedure demonstrate how readers reflected the concerns of their time in the topics they chose to consider and how they drew on the learning of both their predecessors and their peers at the Inns. The first study based primarily on readings, this book threw light on legal education, early Tudor financial and administrative procedure, and the relationship between the ways that law was made, taught and used.

Judicial review at the margins: Law, power, and prerogative

“…'The process of seizing land and granting livery of it was a profound expression of lordship, and the exercise of prerogative lordship was an equally profound expression of kingship.' 73 These traditional rights were presented in a text called Prerogativa Regis, a statute (if such it was -almost too perfectly, contemporaries were uncertain as to whether it was a statute or not) 74 passed probably in the reign of Edward I or Edward II. 75 These feudal rights, although increasingly anachronistic, were exploited more systematically during the years of the 'New Monarchy' (from the restoration of Edward IV to the death of Henry VIII) not only to obtain money for the Crown, a necessary obsession of the kings of this period, but also to keep tabs on the nobility.…”