Chapter 2 surveys the system of courts that emerged around the early Tudor monarchs. Examining ordinances for the organisation of the royal Council from the late medieval period, it reveals earlier precedents for prioritising justice-giving, particularly to poor suitors, within the central administration. Further procedural models are identified in the established central Court of Chancery, its procedure under English bills and its reference to conscience in decision-making, and in the arbitration of disputes by regional magnates. Turning to royal conciliar justice, the chapter outlines the administrative and judicial capacities of the councils in the North and in the Welsh Marches. Finally, it sets out the development of two offshoots of the royal Council by the very end of the fifteenth century: the council or court in the Star Chamber at Westminster and the Court of Requests within the attendant royal household.

This chapter explores the dramatic performance of libel. Aggrieved amateur playmakers across England made canny use of costume, props, meter, and other theatrical technologies to disseminate libels. Drawing from the Star Chamber records, the first section surveys the varieties of media and performance genres employed by libelers, including festive games, pageants, songs, and shows; street theater; and professional playing. Examples such as the Wells Shows of 1607, “The Death of the Lord of Kyme” in 1601, and even Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor illustrate the thorough hybridity of libelous performance. The rest of the chapter is devoted to two major case studies: the Kendal Stage Play of 1621 and the university play Club Law (1599–1600). These are prime examples of activist theater: they aimed not just to entertain their audiences but also to mobilize them, defame them, or otherwise incite them to action. Situated in their respective local contexts – the struggle over tenant right in Kendal and town–gown conflict in Cambridge – the surviving traces of these plays document the circulation of communal feelings that made libelous performance such a potent medium for bad publicity.

Our penultimate chapter explores the extent to which the Tudor period saw a legal renaissance. It examines developments in the common law courts but also explores the development of new conciliar courts outside the common law, most notably star chamber and the court of equity, which were to prove influential. It also examines the further rise in the use and importance of statute law in this period, demonstrating that the Reformation statutes that split England from the Roman Catholic Church underscored the power of Parliamentary statute. Attention is also given to some developments in the common law courts during this period concerning the law of obligations (the development of the principle of consideration in contract law), property law (the development of the writ of ejectment that replaced the older land law writs and the origins of the law of trusts) and criminal law (the development of the distinction between murder and manslaughter).

The calls for freedom of press in the mid-seventeenth century, like the earlier calls for freedom of speech, also came mostly from devoutly religious people: Puritans and Nonconformists and their religious-based demands. That religious basis was mostly a desire to disseminate religious preaching and knowledge, and an imperative to do that not only by preaching and other speech but by publishing religious books and pamphlets, in addition to a religious basis in freedom of conscience. John Milton, the trailblazer in seeking "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience," tried to extend parrhesia from speech to publications, and built his case in Areopagitica and in other pamphlets on freedom of conscience, on Bible passages, and on similar religious messages. Though Areopagitica is generally described in scholarly literature as unnoticed and overlooked until the end of the seventeenth century, it in fact was relatively widely known, as nearly fifty quotations or allusions show before that century’s end. Besides Milton, other Puritans were the dominant advocates for freedom of press before the end of the seventeenth century, including three who wrote a generation before Milton (an anonymous minister, Leonard Busher, and William Ames), and Levellers and others.

This chapter surveys the substantive common law in the later sixteenth century. The rise of habeas corpus enabled the judicial review of prerogative jurisdictions and powers, so that the rule of law was now firmly rooted. The new atmosphere of rights was linked to Magna Carta, now rescued from oblivion. Private law was still dominated by the land law. Remedies for the protection of real property were simplified, but much confusion had been introduced by the Statutes of Uses and Wills, and a major new concern was the use of perpetuity clauses in family settlements to prevent the barring of entails. The law of contract is largely timeless, but the doctrine of consideration belongs to this period, and a decision of 1602 finally sanctioned an action for recovering debts without the archaic obstacle called wager of law. The law of tort was dominated by defamation rather than negligence. Criminal law was not the concern of practising lawyers and was relatively undeveloped, especially at the level of misdemeanours. The role of the Star Chamber is considered. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of Elizabeth I’s attitudes to law and justice.