Staff Profile

Professor Chris Brooks

(email at c.w.brooks@durham.ac.uk)

Chris Brooks has wide-ranging research interests in the history of early-modern England, with a particular focus on the law and its social and cultural implications. His publications include Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England , and he is currently preparing the 1625-1689 volume of the Oxford History of the Laws of England. He offers postgraduate supervision on many aspects of English social, political and legal history, 1500-1800.

During the 2012-2013 academic year Chris Brooks will be holding the Fletcher-Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellowship in British History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Research Interests

• Early modern British history
• English legal and social history 1500-1850
• Political and constitutional history 1485-1700

Publications

Books: authored

• 2009 Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 468 pp.
• 1998 Lawyers, Litigation and English Society since 1450, Hambledon, 274 pp.
• 1986 Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth. The Lower Branch of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 396 pp.

Books: edited

• 1997 (co-edited with M.J. Lobban) Communities and Courts in Britain 1150-1900, Hambledon, 262 pp.
• 1994 (co-edited with J. Barry) The Middling Sort of People. Culture, Society and Politics in England 1550-1800, Macmillan, 282 pp.

Edited sources

• 1995 The Admissions Register of Barnard's Inn 1620-1869, 193 pp.

Essays in edited volumes

• 2010 'A puritan collaboration in defence of the liberty of the subject: James Morice, Robert Beale, and the Elizabethan campaingn against ecclesiastical authority', in Scott, Paul (ed.), Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in the Republic of Letters: essays in honour of Richard G. Maber, Manchester University Press, pp. 1-14
• 2005 'Lawyers as intermediaries between people and courts: some reflections on the English experience c. 1450-1800', in Dolan, Claire. (ed.), Entre Justice et Justiciables: Les Auxiliaires de la Justice du Moyen Age au XXe Siecle, Les Presses de Université Laval, pp. 279-299
• 2005 'Litigation, participation and agency in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England', in David Lemmings (ed.), The British and their Laws in the Eighteenth Century, Boydell Press, pp. 155-181
• 2004 'Les actes juridiques, le cycle de vie, et les relations sociales dans l’Angleterre de la période moderne', in S. Beauvalet-Boutouyrie, V. Gourdon & F.J. Ruggiu (eds.), Liens sociaux et actes notariés dans le monde urbain en France et en Europe (XVI-XVIII siecles), Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, pp. 77-86
• 2004 'The longitudinal study of civil litigation in England 1200-1996', in Wilfrid Prest & S. R. Anleu (eds.), Litigation Past and Present, Univ. of New South Wales Press, pp. 24-43
• 2002 'Contemporary views of 'feudal' social and political relationships in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England', in Natalie Fryde, Pierre Monnet & Gerhard Oexle (eds.), Die Gegenwart des Feudalismus Présence du féodalisme et présent de la féodalité The Presence of Feudalism, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 109-135

Teaching Areas

• English social and cultural history 1500-1800
• Law and society in England 1600-1800
• Seventeenth-century English political history