ABSTRACT
This present volume is in large measure a sequel to my previous study, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England. 1 The culture of equity, as I see it, is not limited to law (as equity has most commonly been approached), but is at least as importantly at play in religion, politics, poetry, and revolution. My work began in the early modern period because I am trained as an early-modernist. Of necessity I glanced back at the long traditions, classical and Judeo-Christian, that have shaped equity, but a history of equity before the sixteenth century (and in contexts other than Anglo-American) is not something I have ever felt prepared to envision. My study, however, ended with an awareness of the differences between early modern equity and equity in our own time: equity remains an important word and set of ideas, but it is not the same complex that it was 400 years ago. That is to be expected. The present volume is an attempt to begin to bridge the history of equity, again largely outside narrowly legal parameters, from 1660 till now (leaving two centuries’ worth of the story to be told by others). My familiarity with and focus on equity have given me the temerity to venture into a period of which my knowledge is otherwise decidedly that of a generalist. Once again, I limit myself to the English-speaking world, specifically Britain and British North America.
