K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 252. $60.00 (ISBN 0-521-81948-2).
While there is no questioning the significance of the changes that Baker describes, his characterization of at least some of them as revolutionary is somewhat problematic. Not only did the changes constitute far less than a paradigmatic shift, but the changes that did occur took place over an extended period of time. Baker’s “revolution” in the land law and the law and practice of real actions (719), for example, occurred over the course of the entire fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while the “procedural revolution” that resulted in the greater determination of legal principle in banc (445) spanned the three quarters of a century. It makes sense that the transformation of a legal system claiming custom as its foundation would proceed gradually and that even fundamental changes would take years to unfold. Sir Edward Coke may have used conservative language to disguise the real changes that took place in English law during the early modern period, but there was plenty of continuity to give substance to his rhetoric of immutability. It is a tribute to the depth and balance of Baker’s scholarship that throughout this volume he devotes as much attention to these less dazzling continuities as to the legal transformation that provides the unifying theme of the book.