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onstitutional history is normally studied with regard to texts: the documents that preserve and safeguard rights, privileges, gains, and concessions and cumulatively form a legal and constitutional “canon.” Moving away from the traditional text-based approach,this essay provides a fresh analysis of the key constitutional themes by employing visual sources as a means of recovering and reevaluating contemporary discourse. Accordingly, on the basis of illuminations in statute books, charters, and legal treatises, this study articulates attitudes toward justice and good governance, toward the perceived qualities of kingship (and queenship), the exercise of the royal prerogative of grace and the king’s relationship with Parliament. It considers the reality behind the images and evaluates how far they differ from conventional textual and contextual interpretations. It also assesses the extent to which the images reveal a coherent and instructive picture not only of the responsibilities of the Crown, but also the expectations of the ruled, especially those who commissioned, owned, and used the legal volumes and themselves had a stake in the system. Illuminated Law Books as Sources Vernacular literature of this type is not normally thought of as containing illumination owing to its technical content and utilitarian nature.The volumes that survive are bespoke collections that were copied and assembled in both regular quarto and smaller, pocket-sized volumes.1 While there is not necessarily a uniformity or set pattern to the material contained in the volumes, their organization and content Constitutional Discourse in Illuminated English Law Books Anthony Musson 189 C The research for this essay was funded by the British Academy. 1 Skemer, “From Archives”; Skemer, “Reading the Law,” pp. 113–15. can be similar.2 They frequently start with collections of English statutes (either the statuta antiqua3 or the nova statuta,4 occasionally both) and then include common -law treatises, some lengthy (such as Bracton or Britton), some shorter (such as Fet Asaver, Judicium Essoniorum, Hengham Parva, and Hengham Magna). Volumes sometimes include or comprise precedents on pleading (such as Brevia placitata or Novae narrationes) and/or registers of writs. Legal historians have understandably been more concerned with the substantive content of the textual material of the volumes than their visual import,5 but there has been some interest in the wider legal context. Michael Clanchy, for example, has drawn attention to the use of visual representation in the transition from a memorial to a documentary culture6 and Baker has examined the images in a number of law books for what they can tell us about lawyers and the development of legal costume in the later Middle Ages.7 Art historians,too,have highlighted the significance of legal manuscripts in the wider study of English Gothic illumination, but they have tended to concentrate on the texts of Roman and canon law, rather than those pertaining to the English common law.8 Special studies of illuminated English texts have been made by art historians (such as Michael Camille, Adelaide Bennett, and M. A. Michael), who have provided detailed and illuminating discussions of the art and its immediate context.9 They have tended to concentrate their analysis on individual volumes,10 however, so to date there has been no systematic study of the images in English law books, nor an attempt to explore the wider significance of their iconography within a legal and political context. A major hurdle in trying to evaluate the continuum of ideas portrayed in the images is the dearth of information concerning the provenance of the books. 2 Skemer, “Sir William Breton’s Book,” pp. 27–28. Skemer provides the contents and organizational scheme for Breton’s statute collection (pp. 38–42), which can be compared with the structure of Anthony Bek’s volume as set out in Bennett, “Anthony Bek’s Copy,” pp. 18–21. 3 Magna Carta (1215, 1225, or 1297 version) and statutes from the reigns of Henry III, Edward I, and Edward II (including ordinances and pseudo-statutes that have not been precisely dated). 4 Depending upon when the volume was compiled,they usually comprised statutes from the reign of Edward III through to Richard II, Henry IV, or Henry VI. Later volumes included statutes of Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII. 5 Richardson and Sayles,“Early Statutes”; Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature; Ramsay,“Law,” p. 284; Baker, “Books of the Common Law,” p. 422. 6 Clanchy, From Memory. For a comparison of different sizes of statute books and an illuminated page, see ibid., plates 16–18. 7 Baker, “History...

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