Sir William Searle Holdsworth: A History of English Law Volume 3: Book III - Mediaeval Common Law 5th ed (1066 - 1485)

The dust jacket image shown is of the 1966 reprint. The current edition has no dustjacket.

Sir William Searle Holdsworth was professor of constitutional law at University College, London (1903–8). After 1922 he was Vinerian professor of English law at Oxford. Holdsworth's greatest achievement is his History of English Law in 17 Volumes.

Sir William Holdsworth's monumental legal history extends from Anglo-Saxon times to the nineteenth-century Judicature Acts. It was interrupted by his death in 1945, when he had reached Volume 12.

Subsequent volumes have been edited by Professors A. L. Goodhart and H. G. Hanbury, at first from Holdsworth's typescript and later, with more difficulty, from his manuscript notes.

Volume 3 consists of the second and larger part of Book III-The Mediaeval Common Law and covers the period I066-1485. It is concerned with the rules of law.

Chapter I deals with the land law, under the headings:-

• The Real Actions;
• Free Tenure,
• Unfree Tenure, and Chattels Real;
• The Free Tenures and Their Incidents;
• The Power of Alienation;
• Seisin;
• Estates;
• Incorporeal Things;
• Inheritance;
• Curtsey and Dower;
• Unfree Tenure;
• The Term of Years;
• The Modes and Forms of Conveyance;
• and Special Customs.
  Chapter II deals with Crime and Tort under the headings:-
  • Self-help;
  • Treason;
  • Benefit of Clergy, and Sanctuary and Abjuration;
  • Principal and Accessory;
  • Offences Against the Person;
  • Possession and Ownership of Chattels;
  • Wrongs to Property;
  • The Principles of Liability;
  • and Lines of Future Development.
    Chapter III deals with contract and quasi-contract, Chapter IV with the question of status, under the headings:-
    • The King;
    • The Incorporate Person;
    • The Villeins;
    • The Infant;
    • The Married Woman;
      Chapter V with the succession of chattels, under the headings:-
      • The Last Will;
      • Restrictions on Testation and Intestate Succession;
      • The Representation of the Deceased,
        Chapter VI with procedure and pleading, under the headings:-
        • The Criminal Law;
        • The Civil Law.