emergency research!

[swan_tower]

Can anybody provide me with or point me toward sources for Elizabethan-era legal contracts or treaties? I need to see the style in which they were written.

And then try to mimic it.

By close of play tomorrow, if I can manage it.

Comments

[novalis.livejournal.com]

regyt recommends Edward Coke, who should be available at any law library.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I suspect I may need to make a library trip to really get what I want, so thank you. (And thank regyt.)

[drydem.livejournal.com]

http://res.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/hgm088v1 (for punctuation)

http://www.renaissance.duelingmodems.com/sumptuary/(for statutes)

http://books.google.com/books?id=KuLjXlExzGgC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=elizabethan+legal+document&source=web&ots=RQnfGKk_dK&sig=wiPvikJ_D_1aOJtHCgIVDATKJNk#PPA28,M1(for legal disputes)

Honestly, the best reference I could find was to "the crabbed latin of Elizabethan legal documents"

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought to look at the sumptuary statues, though I had that page bookmarked. For the rest, thank you; I was getting lost in the wilds of JSTOR.

This thing really ought to be in Latin, but even if I could dust off my skills enough to fake sixteenth-century legal Latin -- not likely, especially by tomorrow -- it wouldn't serve the purpose.

[khet-tcheba.livejournal.com]

Does the text of a charter help? I'm not certain which aspects you're most concerned about duplicating.

This may help

[wrathchylde.livejournal.com]

Technically it is categorized as medieval, but I seem to recall finding a lot of info on the Elizabethan area either on this site or by following links from it ... sorry I can't be more specific.



http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/display.cfm?Action=View&Category=Manuscripts

Oops

[wrathchylde.livejournal.com]

era, not area.

[boannan.livejournal.com]

These are transcriptions of records of legal disputes. Not contracts, but might be helpful.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=158

[boannan.livejournal.com]

and here's a lecture summarizing some of the main legal sources from that era, if you do have to go to a library:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/ess_talk.htm

[unforth.livejournal.com]

If primary sources will help, it's not an area I know about, but there are some good bibliographies on early English Law - they could help you at Lilly, assuming you've got the time for that kind of research. You also might be able to tract something down on Early English Books Online. Secondary sources I don't know a thing about, unfortunately.