History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, The » (New edition)

Pollock and Maitland "have endeavoured to draw a slight sketch, which becomes filler as time goes on, of the general outlines of that part of English legal history which lies on the other side of the accession of Edward I" and "to set forth at some length the doctrines and rules of English law which prevailed... under Henry II., his sons and grandson." The chapters of the first book correspond to periods of history, and those of the second book, to branches of law.

Leaving constitutional law and ecclesiastical law for others, Pollock and Maitland write that a work that said nothing of "the history of ownership, possession, contract, agency, trust, legal proof and so forth," or "marriage, last wills, the fate of an intestate's goods, the punishment of criminous clerks, ... would be an exceedingly fragmentary book." The present work "has been shaped by a desire to avoid ... vain repetition," but "we have at times devoted several pages to the elucidation of some question, ... which seemed to us difficult and unexplored and worthy of patient discussion."

The text of the Liberty Fund edition is that of the second edition of 1898, with the bibliography and notes by historian S. F. C. Milsom, written for the Cambridge reissue 1968, supplied here as an appendix.