The Emperor of Law by Kaius Tuori

In the days of the Roman Empire, the emperor was considered not only the ruler of the state, but also its supreme legal authority, fulfilling the multiple roles of supreme court, legislator, and administrator. The Emperor of Law explores how the emperor came to assume the mantle of a judge, beginning with Augustus, the first emperor, and spanning the years leading up to Caracalla and the Severan dynasty. 

While earlier studies have attempted to explain this change either through legislation or behaviour, this volume undertakes a novel analysis of the gradual expansion and elaboration of the emperor's adjudication and jurisdiction: by analysing the process through historical narratives, it argues that the emergence of imperial adjudication was a discourse that involved not only the emperors, but also petitioners who sought their rulings, lawyers who aided them, the senatorial elite, and the Roman historians and commentators who described it. Stories of emperors settling lawsuits and demonstrating their power through law, including those depicting 'mad' emperors engaging in violent repressions, played an important part in creating a shared conviction that the emperor was indeed the supreme judge alongside the empirical shift in the legal and political dynamic. Imperial adjudication reflected equally the growth of imperial power during the Principate and the centrality of the emperor in public life, and constitutional legitimation was thus created through the examples of previous actions - examples that historical authors did much to shape. 

Aimed at readers of classics, Roman law, and ancient history, The Emperor of Law offers a fundamental reinterpretation of the much debated problem of the advent of imperial supremacy in law that illuminates the importance of narrative studies to the field of legal history.

Review: The Legitimacy of Bastards by Helen Matthews

"The Legitimacy of Bastards" is the first book to consider the individuals who had illegitimate children, the ways in which they provided for them and attitudes towards both the parents and the bastard children. It also highlights important differences between the views of illegitimacy taken by the Church and by the English law.

Heads up - this work does not deal with royal bastards if that is what you are looking for - the main focus is on the legalities of bastards among the aristocratic and gentry, with a heavy focus on inheritance and social standing.

Matthews' book is broken down into manageable chapters dealing with the legal complexities defining what constitutes (or not) marriage under both canon and common law, which in itself then sets up the definition and status of those born out of wedlock.

After providing a case study of the de Warenne family to put things into context, we proceed to what is defined as sexual misconduct - adultery, adulterers, society's view of them and their offspring, but more importantly, how the child was viewed within the context of the family. The next chapters cover inheritance, social status and opportunity. Finally, we are told, the shift in attitude towards bastards developed in the fifteenth century as pedigree and genealogy became more and more important, and sometimes these by-blows were simply written out of the family tree. And with the heralding of religious change and the rise of puritanism in the sixteenth century, attitudes again changed.

Matthews cites many examples in her book - but don't worry if you start to lose track of them all as she provides the readers with a concise list at the end, neatly cross-referenced with the chapter in which they are discussed. Having extensively read myself, a fair number of names were familiar - but it never occurred to me to delve deeper into both the social and legal complexities of bastardy in the medieval period. Most of what we know of bastards in this period tends to be attached to our reading and study of royalty, whose attitudes to bastards was very different to those on society's lower rungs.

This is a well researched tome - the mind boggles at the number of resources consulted, and this reader in particular is glad that the leg-work has already been done. I can see this as a valuable resource in itself for those interested in medieval family and law; but also for those who dabbled in historical fiction, you may also want to add this to your reference shelf, as it will certainly aid in adding a touch of realism and authenticity to some storylines.  I still have this book sitting on my desk as I type as I am not quite ready to consign it to the book shelves just yet.

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England - Tom Lambert

From Oxford University Press:

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King AEthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities.

The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. 

Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. 

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

Family Secrets: The Scandalous History of an Extraordinary Family by Derek Malcolm

‘Some people’s secrets should never be told. The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’

Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. 

Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey.  The victim was the self-titled Count de Borch, Count de Borch, aka Anton Baumberg, a dubious character, womaniser and possibly a white slaver and spy for the Germans, who had seduced the lieutenant's wife, Dorothy.

The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passione, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. 

Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . 

By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair.

From The Church Times 15th September 1917

[The trial that followed the shooting in his Paddington lodgings of the self-styled Count de Borch, Anton Baumberg, by an army officer home from the Front, had provided a distraction from the war news. Was it, some were asking, a case of a husband’s right to avenge his wife’s honour?]

THE trial of Lieutenant [Douglas] Malcolm on the charge of murder let loose a flood of talk about what is known in some other countries as the “unwritten law”. Counsel for the prosecution emphatically affirmed that no such thing is known in the English Courts. If a person’s death is compassed with intention to kill, the slayer is a murderer, and counsel for the defence abstained from resting his case on the plea of the “unwritten law”. He argued that the prisoner, when he shot Baumberg, was acting in self-defence, and the jury accepted this theory, with the result that Lieut. Malcolm was acquitted. It was certainly better so: the law was not strained. This deplorable case raises the question why such people as Baumberg are allowed to be at large. He was known to the police as an undesirable alien, preying on weak women, keeping company with spies, and supporting himself by other infamous practices. He ought long ago to have been placed out of mischief, either by deportation or by internment. His removal through death rids us only of one among many of his sort. Possibly the fact that public attention has been drawn to the existence of this type of persons in our midst may induce the authorities to deal with them effectively.

see also:

A Murderer  in the Family
British Pathe
Like Lover, Like Son
The Sydney Morning Herald Archive
The Daily News, Perth, Archive