Address at the Lincoln Charter of the Forest Conference, Bishop Grosseteste University: The Charter of the Forest: Evolving Human Rights in Nature

This conference is a singular event, long over due. It has been 258 years since William Blackstone celebrated “these two sacred charters,”1 Carta de Foresta and Magna Carta, with his celebrated publication of their authentic texts. In 2015, the Great Charter of Liberties enjoyed scholarly, political and popular focus. The companion Forest Charter was and is too much neglected.2 I salute the American Bar Association, and Dan Magraw, for the ABA’s educational focus of the Forest Charter, as well as Magna Carta. Today we restore some balance with this conference’s searching and insightful examination of the Forest Charter’s significance

British Wildlife Law Before the American Revolution: Lessons from the Past

Early legislation may excite the condescending interest ·that Dr. Johnson directed toward a dog walking on its hind legs: It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all. British wildlife law, however, merits more respect. As long ago as the Middle Ages, man\u27s appetite for meat endowed legislators with at least an ambling competence at wildlife management. Nor has the passage of time made their efforts wholly irrelevant. Early methods of controlling habitat, for example, may still be appropriate since historical change has not altered the needs of animals as it has those of men. This is not to say that within the bestiary of early British law there does not run many a droll species of regulation, amusing only because of its ludicrous appearance. Indeed, within the following discussion of the goals and methods of those laws, a kind of carnival fever may appear at times to have overtaken the legislators. But such are the parallels between early problems and those faced today that in the end, to a surprising degree, the stock of old laws can still provide exemplary service

Wand\u27ring this Woody Maze : Deciphering the Obscure Wilderness of Paradise Regained

The setting of Milton’s great sequel is puzzling, being called a desert and a “waste wild” (IV. 523) repeatedly and at the same time including descriptions of protective oaks and woody mazes. These conflicting descriptions conjure up several questions: In which environment does the epic take place? Because Milton is so detailed in his adaptations of biblical narrative the inclusion of trees is quite perplexing. While he does tend to expand biblical narrative quite frequently – e.g. Paradise Lost – he rarely initiates a change without just cause. The crux of this particular change centers on what this just cause could be. How does the addition of a few trees change the overall effect of Milton’s brief epic? This thesis thus attempts to find further meaning in Paradise Regained’s setting by exploring three possibilities for this just cause while uncovering what the concept of a tree/forest means in early modern England

"Lawes of the Forrest" : mapping violence on the female bodyscape in "Titus Andronicus"

This paper discusses the defi nition of the forest as a space regulated by the repetitive act of appropriation on the part of the royal authority as well as the correspondences between the rhetoric of forest possession and the construction of another locus communis for the political use of nature, i.e. female body. Spatialization/naturalization of the female body in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is introduced with the use of the interlocking imaginary topographies of “feminized” topography of Rome and that of the forest as a whore. It is between these two that the politicized female bodies of Lavinia and Tamora oscillate, mapped in language as bodyscapes, onto which violence of “lawes of the forrest” is inscribed

Recent Additions to the Collection - Spring 2005: A Guide to the Exhibit

Exhibition program from a Spring 2005 exhibit presented in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room at the Boston College Law Library. The books in the exhibit are described as many of the books likely to have been owned and used by a seventeenth-century practicing common lawyer – not necessarily a \u27typical\u27 lawyer’s library, but rather the library of a particularly wealthy and learned practitioner

Theatre in education : an historical and analytical study

No abstract available

Environmental Renaissance Studies

Recent developments in renaissance and early modern ecocriticism, since surveys by Karen Raber and Sharon O’Dair, have made the field discursive. Some critics maintain that ecocriticism, ecostudies or environmental studies must be self-consciously activist and presentist. Others practise a more historicist approach, which is only implicitly activist, if at all. This article considers the recent environmental criticism of renaissance literature and Shakespeare – in its place on the spectrum of presentism and historicism – and argues that the field’s discursiveness is a positive development which will lead to a growth of ecocritical work in the period. Recent relevant work in environmental history is introduced, and a case made for a greater engagement with it in literary ecocriticism

The Equity Jurisdiction of the Exchequer

The municipal Jaw of England is divided into common Jaw and equity. This is so because in the middle ages, the judges of the courts of common law (the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King\u27s Bench) believed that they could not expand the existing law in order to solve new problems. They thought that they were bound by the established Jaw as found in their own earlier judicial opinions. Furthermore, they felt that it was the function of Parliament to change the law; therefore, it would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative power for the courts to expand the law. Since Parliament in the middle ages was not an efficient instrument for law reform, the common Jaw began to stagnate

The episcopal administration of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1559-1575

This thesis sets out to examine Matthew Parker's diocesan, rather than archiepiscopal, policies and practices. The principal features of Parker's life are outlined, the size, etc., of the diocese is described and estimates of population are included. In describing some of the features of Parker's 'orderly' policy (and the desire for order was his main motivation), impropriations, maintenance of parish church fabric, supplying of books to parish churches, providing for schools and licensing teachers, and supervision of the cathedral are touched upon. The administrative structure of the diocese is outlined, and biographical material on the commissaries general, the archdeacons and their officials, the bishop suffragan, the high commissioners and the diocesan visitors is given. One chapter describes what happened to the Marian ecclesiastics in the Elizabethan diocese of Canterbury, and another is concerned with the new clergy, the lay readers and the damage done by non-residence. Parker's first problem was to find clergy of any kind; it was only later he was able to be more particular about their qualifications. Parker's attitude to puritanism and his policies towards diocesan non-conformity is analyzed. The administration of lands and properties is described and the criticism levelled against Parker for behaving like a great lord rather than a curate of souls is noted. Chapter IX , describes the royal taxation of the diocese---a total of over £12,000 for the period of Parker's administration---and discusses first fruits, tenths, clerical subsidies, supplies of armour, and special levies. The importance of statute law and the re-invigoration of the ecclesiastical courts is noted. Included are maps and appended biographies of 51 cathedral prebendaries and preachers. MSS. collections in Canterbury cathedral, the Kent County Archives Office, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Library, Lambeth Palace, Somerset House, the Public Record Office and the Bodleian Library were used