Chris Brooks, who has died of a heart attack aged 65, was a pioneer of the history of law, particularly in the civil war period in England and its aftermath. Before his book Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth (1986), the discipline had focused on the big picture of the constitution and the disputes of rich men, with the occasional examination of the lot of the poor. Chris concentrated instead on the "middling sort" the rising middle classes and the "lawyers" who advised them in short, the origin of solicitors.
By doing so, he was focusing on the people who were going to make the law work, after a nightmare of lawlessness during the civil war. These new lawyers were men who scoured pubs on market days in small towns across the country, offering their services to people who otherwise would have had no access to any kind of legal representation.
Continue reading...