Discourse on History, Law, and Governance in the Public Career of John Seldon, 1610-1635

Jeremy Caple is an assistant professor of history at the University of
Toronto.

The importance of the common law in British history is well known, and
the sometimes rancorous debate between those who perceived the common
law as merely “municipal” (and restricted to one jurisdiction) and
those who advanced the common law as one of the most magnificent blooms
of British history has received much attention. The current work
reflects the career of one champion of the common law who acted in
Parliament and whose scholarly output in both history and the law
reflects a concern with defending the role of precedent in the
parliamentary system. John Selden emerges from the pages of several
works on the period, but Paul Christianson’s analysis of Selden’s
public career brings us much closer to the role played by a most
important parliamentary manager and legal adviser.

As a lawyer, Selden advanced the common law both through historical
analysis of medieval laws and practice and through a perhaps more
contentious studying of 16th- and 17th-century canon law and civil or
Roman law, which made his approach cosmopolitan and often antithetical
to the more “insular” practices of other common-law lawyers. It is
in this area that Selden became more controversial. His reading of
precedent was enhanced with a far more thorough understanding of the
arguments being made to satisfy the need of the King and the King’s
servants to overcome parliamentary recalcitrance. This made him a
redoubtable opponent and also brought him trouble: his work was
suppressed, and he faced arrest for the highly critical nature of his
analysis of the role of the King’s servants throughout the period.

It is abundantly clear from this work that Selden played a vital part
in the organization and presentation of parliamentary positions
regarding the role of Parliament and the idea of mixed monarchy advanced
to limit the pretensions of the King. As both lawyer and historian,
Selden presented carefully analyzed documents based on a solid empirical
base. His legal and historical scholarship allowed him to perceive the
essential links between continental legal codes that provided the
“frame of governance” for all states.