The Online Library of Liberty

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• Preface to the Fifth Edition
• Table of Mediaeval Cases
• Table of Modern Cases N.b. the Report References, Which Appeared In This Table In Earlier Editions, Will Be Found Incorporated In the Footnotes In the Text.
• Table of Laws and Statutes
• A Concise History of the Common Law
• Book One: a General Survey of Legal History
• Part 1: The Crown and the State
• Summary
• Chapter 1: The Anglo-saxon Period: Races and Religion
• Chapter 2: The Conquest to Henry II: The Beginnings of Administration
• Chapter 3: The Great Charters: Law Separates From Administration
• Chapter 4: Edward I to Richard II: Statutes and Social Revolution
• Chapter 5: The Fifteenth Century: the Problem of Enforcement
• Chapter 6: The Tudors: Renaissance, Reformation and Reception
• Chapter 7: The Stuarts: Struggle For the Supremacy of Law
• Chapter 8: The Eighteenth Century: Industrial Revolution
• Chapter 9: The Nineteenth Century: Liberalism and Reform
• Part 2: The Courts and the Profession
• Summary
• Chapter 1: The Communal Courts
• Chapter 2: Seignorial Jurisdiction
• Chapter 3: The Crown and Local Courts
• Chapter 4: The Jury
• Chapter 5: The Origins of the Central Courts
• Chapter 6: The Elaboration of the Judicial System: 1307-1509
• Chapter 7: The Tudors and the Common Law Courts
• Chapter 8: The Rise of the Prerogative Courts
• Chapter 9: Prerogative, Equity and Law Under the Stuarts
• Chapter 10: Parliament and the Privy Council
• Chapter 11: The Courts In the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 12: The Legal Profession
• Chapter 13: The Growth of the Judiciary
• Chapter 14: Professional Literature
• Part 3: Some Factors In Legal History
• Summary
• Chapter 1: The Civil Law of Rome
• Chapter 2: The Canon Law of the Church
• Chapter 3: Custom
• Chapter 4: Legislation
• Chapter 5: The Principle of Precedent
• Book Two: Special Part
• Part 1: Procedure
• Summary
• Chapter 1: The Forms of Action
• Chapter 2: Civil Procedure
• Chapter 3: Pleading
• Part 2: Crime and Tort
• Summary
• Chapter 1: Criminal Procedure
• Chapter 2: The Felonies
• Chapter 3: Misdemeanours, Trespass and Tort
• Chapter 4: Liability, Civil and Criminal
• Chapter 5: Defamation
• Part 3: Real Property
• Summary
• Chapter 1: Feudalism
• Chapter 2: Feudalism In England
• Chapter 3: Inheritance and Alienability
• Chapter 4: Tenures and Incidents
• Chapter 5: The Rise of the Entail
• Chapter 6: The Common Law Estates Down to 1540
• Chapter 7: Uses and the Statute
• Chapter 8: The Later Law of Real Property
• Chapter 9: The Mortgage
• Chapter 10: Conveyances
• Part 4: Contract
• Summary
• Chapter 1: Origins
• Chapter 2: The Fourteenth Century
• Chapter 3: Assumpsit to Slade’s Case
• Chapter 4: Contract After Slade’s Case
• Chapter 5: Law Merchant and Admiralty
• Part 5: Equity
• Summary
• Chapter 1: The Early History of Equity
• Chapter 2: The Formative Period
• Chapter 3: The Work of the Chancellors
• Part 6: Succession
• Summary
• Chapter 1: Inheritance
• Chapter 2: Intestacy
• Chapter 3: Wills

SUMMARY

• Contract - - - - - - - -
• chapter 1.Origins - - - - - - - -
• chapter 2.The Fourteenth Century - - - - -
• chapter 3.Assumpsit to Slade’s Case - - - - -
• chapter 4.Contract after Slade’s Case - - - -
• chapter 5.Law Merchant and Admiralty - - - -

CONTRACT

It is remarkable that, in spite of the numerous foreign influences which were at work in the field of contract, the common law was so little affected by them. The Church very early took a strong view of the sanctity of contractual relationships, insisting that in conscience the obligation of a contract was completely independent of writings, forms and ceremonies, and tried as far as she could to translate this moral theory into terms of law. Then, too, there were the mercantile courts which were endeavouring to enforce the practice of the best merchants and to express that practice in terms acceptable to either or both of the two conflicting schools of legal experts whose approbation was necessary—the civilians and the canonists. In England all these influences were at work. Glanvill knew just enough of the Roman classification of contracts to be able to describe—and then misapply—it, while Bracton endeavoured to express common law in Romanesque language. In the later middle ages ecclesiastical Chancellors in England were acting on canonical ideas—and yet in spite of all this the English law of contract is neither Roman nor canonical. If we are to seek the reasons for this we shall have to examine a good deal of procedural detail. The various forms of action had come into existence, and had taken definite shape, long before English law regarded the field of contract as a whole. By the time these foreign influences became strong the common law had already developed an inflexible system of procedure which did not easily permit the introduction of new ideas. In consequence, the common law courts were left to develop a law of contract as best they could out of the stubborn materials of the forms of action, and so, after many years of uncertainty and long conflicts with the technical and procedural difficulties which by that time were inherent in the common law system, we finally arrived at a systematic law of contract about three centuries later than the rest of the world. This Part will therefore be devoted to a brief summary of the lines along which the common law of contract developed.