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Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian – Kindle edition by Edward Jenks. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Edward Plantagenet, The English Justinian.
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Description from Publisher: Pyrrhus Press specializes in bringing books long out of date back to life, allowing today’s readers access to yesterday’s treasures. This is a concise but comprehensive biography of King Edward of the Plantagenet dynasty. From the preface:“IF ever there was a national hero, it was Edward of England. In his person, his character, his position, and his policy, are summed up the essential elements of that great English nation which came into existence during his lifetime. How far Edward was its creator, how far its creature, is a shrewd question, which each student of history must answer for himself; but I trust that this little book may help him to form a sound conclusion. Whatever be the answer, there can be little doubt, that it would be impossible to find a truer symbol of the English nation, in the days of its glorious youth, than the king whose life is sketched in the following pages.Perhaps it is necessary that I should offer a word of apology for the intrusion of a mere lawyer upon a scene so dominated by great historians. My explanation is, that I have long been unable to understand, how anyone but a lawyer can possibly appreciate the true inwardness of Edward’s reign. The Common Law which came into existence during his lifetime was, and is, the very picture of English national life, the concrete form into which the national spirit crystallises with the moving centuries.Some of Edward’s most brilliant achievements in legislation and statecraft are wholly missed by lay historians, simply because these achievements are expressed in highly technical language. If I have essayed the perilous task of striving to make technical matters clear to the general reader, as in Chapters IX. and XIII., I have done so because I have felt, that it was idle to attempt, in any other way, to bring out Edward’s real greatness. But, even with this conviction, I should hardly have ventured the task, had I not been encouraged, by those whose opinions are entitled to greater weight than my own, to hope that I might in some degree succeed in persuading my readers, that Law is a dull subject only to those who do not understand it.”
