ABSTRACT
The question of the relationship between the legal system, authority and state power in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England is one of quite extraordinary complexity. On the one hand, the courts were powerful regulatory mechanisms, dealing not only with crime but numerous aspects of social and economic life. It is no exaggeration to argue that the long arm of the law was the strongest limb of the body politic. But, on the other hand, law enforcement varied in its intensity and efficiency: some areas were virtually lawless zones’; the practice of local courts sometimes deviated considerably from the letter of the law as enacted or interpreted in Westminster; and most legal officials were rank amateurs who were as much concerned with the preservation of local harmony as they were with the (often divisive) business of litigation. In sum, there were considerable institutional constraints on the exercise of authority through the law.
