Event Details

History Department Research Seminar Series

The History Department is pleased to host Dr William Eves, Nottingham University, who will present on ‘Law and Scripture in ‘Part One’ of the so-called Très ancien coutumier of Thirteenth-century Normandy’

This paper examines how Norman law and custom is framed in the first part of the Très-ancien coutumier of Normandy (written c. 1200). It is tempting to locate this text within a trajectory of Anglo-Norman legal writing in which texts became increasingly influenced by Roman law towards the end of the twelfth century, and then heavily influenced by Roman law by the mid-thirteenth century. However, the tendency of legal historians to focus on the presence of Roman learning in legal writing in England and Normandy in this period has arguably obscured more important questions that should be asked of this text. First, this paper argues that the Romanizing passages in the work are probably interpolations. Furthermore, if we view the work on its own terms, it becomes clear that it is an attempt to present the law and custom of Normandy in alignment with moral imperatives derived from Scripture. This challenges any attempt to fit the text into a trajectory of legal development marked by an increasing awareness of Roman law, and reminds us of an alternative, but no less important, intellectual framework through which secular law could be viewed in the period.

Dr Will Eves is an assistant professor in Law at the University of Nottingham in 2021. Prior to this, he was a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews' Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research. Most of his career has involved moving between law and history departments, researching the procedural and doctrinal development of the early English common law (particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries). This is reflected in his educational background. Will first obtained an LLB, followed by an LLM. After a period working in the legal sector, he undertook an MLitt in medieval history at the University of St Andrews. He then completed a PhD in medieval legal history, also at St Andrews, on the use and development of the English common law action mort d'ancestor in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. During the final year of this doctoral research, Will also held a 6-month Scouloudi Junior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research.