Chapter II: Five Epochs of Legal Change in England

1. The time of Henry II, when the King’s Courts became organized, and began to evolve a Common Law for the whole realm out of the mass of local customs.

2. The times of Edward I and Edward III, when the solidification of the kingdom saw the creation of a partly representative legislature, the enactment of important statutes, and the establishment of a vigorous organ for the development and amendment of the law in the Chancellorship.

3. The time of Henry VIII and Edward VI, when the progress of society and an ecclesiastical revolution caused the passing of several sweeping legal reforms, separated the courts and the law of England from a system of jurisprudence which had influenced it in common with the rest of Western Christendom, and permanently reduced the power of the clergy and of clerical ideas.

4. The epoch of the Great Civil War and Revolution, when legislative authority, hitherto shared or disputed by the Crown and the Houses of Parliament, passed definitively to the latter, and particularly to the popular branch of Parliament, and when (as a consequence) the relation of the Monarch to the landholding aristocracy, and that of the State to its subjects in religious matters, underwent profound alterations.

5. The reigns of William IV and Victoria, when the rapid growth of manufacturing industry, of trade, and of population, coupled with the influence as well of new ideas in the sphere of government as of advances made in economic and social science, has shaken men loose from many old traditions or prejudices, and has, while rendering much of the old law inapplicable, made a great deal of new legislation indispensable.

Now let us consider what are the forces, influences, or conditions which at all times and everywhere become the sources and determining causes of changes in laws and institutions, these latter being that framework which society constructs to meet its needs, whether administrative or economic or social.

Five such determining causes may be singled out as of special importance. They are these.

1. Political changes, whether they consist in a shifting of power as between the classes controlling the government of a country, or affect the structure of the governmental machinery itself, as for instance by the substitution of a monarch for an assembly or of an assembly for a monarch.

2. The increase of territory, whether as added to and incorporated in the pre-existing home of a nation or as constituting a subject dominion.

3. Changes in religion, whether they modify the working of the constitution of the country or involve the abolition of old laws and the enactment of new ones.

4. Economic changes, such as the increase of industrial production or the creation of better modes of communication, with the result of facilitating the exchange of commodities.

5. The progress of philosophic or scientific thought, whether as enouncing new principles which ultimately take shape in law, or as prompting efforts to make the law more logical, harmonious and compendious.

The influence of other nations might be added, as a sixth force, but as this usually acts through speculative thought, less frequently by directly creating institutions and laws, it may be deemed a form of No. 5.

The two last of these five sources of change, viz. commerce and speculative or scientific thought, are constantly, and therefore gradually at work, while the other three usually, though not invariably, operate suddenly and at definite moments. All have told powerfully both on Rome and on England. But as the relative importance of each varies from one country to another, so we shall discover that some have counted for more in the case of Rome, some in that of England. The differences throw an instructive light on the annals of the two nations.