Adam B. Forsyth

History is littered with empires undone by profligate public expenditures on learning. Oh wait.

Not always the angle that has interested people most, but Legge was also and perhaps primarily an important and extremely learned civil & ecclesiastical lawyer (in addition to being a playwright and college master!)

The first REQ 2 (Court of Requests proceedings) bundles for James I (which also include some Charles I proceedings) are now searchable on The National Archives online catalogue. As ever, loads of interesting stuff in there. discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/r/C...

History Society lecture titled The Early History of the English Bar by Professor Sir John Baker KC LLD FBA. The background is a medieval manuscript-style illustration showing robed legal figures seated above and a group of people debating around a green table below, with scrolls and papers scattered.

📚 The Early History of the English Bar

In this lecture, Professor Sir John Baker explores the origins of the Bar, the rise of Serjeants-at-Law, and the growing influence of the Inns of Court.

🗓 Monday 30 March, 6pm
👥 Open to the public
🎟️ Bookings: nrtm.pl/4kcP7c2

Outside the Level 2 Reading Room in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk there is a wellbeing display. Here are some it's little zines that genuinely made me smile.

It's hardly an original observation, but it really is astonishing how accomplished and penetrating this book is over such a wide range of themes

A blithely reductive portrait of the complex experiences and beliefs of many individual people?

Yes! But we are having fun.

‘Oh no! The pursuivant has alerted the town bailiffs to your Marian icons, and he is coming to arrest you with a precept of attachment!

Attempt escape? (This will risk contumacy; but if successful, +5 to your Recusancy Creds.) Y/N?’

‘Oh no! The defendant’s proctor has filed exceptions against your witnesses!’

‘But his Latin is faulty—complain to Diocesan Chancellor?

(This will cost you 4 charisma.) Yes/No?’

‘Oh no! Your suit in the diocesan consistory has failed!’

‘REGISTRAR: Pay my Reverend Lord’s tabellion or be made excommunicate!’

‘Seek writ of prohibition? Yes or No?’

There are more possibilities for video games about early modern English ecclesiastical / other litigation than have hitherto been acknowledged.

I don’t talk about it here, but in addition to the considerations about arrest, there is also another story about powers of search that I intend to write at some point

If anyone would like to know a bit more about the earlier history of this issue: I wrote something about it…

(also if people want to know more about where their rights and legal ideas came from: please join us in learning about the very boring technical things out of which they emerged! i promise it’s worth stomaching the confusing, tedious parts!)

re: development of formative Elizabethan views about this issue, see pinned skeet?

It’s complicated, but in some ways it actually somewhat precedes that, since the ‘subtype’ that had been most controversial in the Elizabethan period had already been banned by the Canons of 1603/4.

I am not sure I would even say that—he, too, was rather authoritarian!

It seems important to me that many of those in Britain who most clearly believed in some form of human equality were strongly in favor of the American Revolution, which encouraged their hopes for a more humane world. E.g. the Unitarian minister John Disney and John Jebb (both abolitionist):

I later changed this to:

‘You blab of this book being rare,
And price not to sell but to scare!
(As if we cannot see,
That in ESTC,
There are sixty-six copies to spare!)’

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

By far my favourite addition is the Case Reports (found by searching for "case report"), giving the outcomes of cases and points of legal interest. discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_a...

For a few examples see e.g. here: varieng.helsinki.fi/series/volum...

Anecdotally, the library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg did often stamp title pages as well, but frequently to verso rather than recto.

Next week! Spaces still available.

A news story: "Disney Reportedly Planning Full Reboot of the INDIANA JONES Franchise"

*INDIANA JONES AND THE CLOSURE OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT*

left to right: William Ross Jones, Jules Skotnes-Brown, Laura Flannigan, Lucy Noakes (President of the Royal Historical Society), and Michaela Kalcher, 2 July 2025

The Society is very pleased to announce the winners of its 2025 Early Career Article and First Book Prizes bit.ly/3GqSCfk

This year's recipients are Laura Flannigan, William Ross Jones, Michaela Kalcher, and Jules Skotnes-Brown for work published in 2024.

Our congratulations to all #Skystorians

Albeit my dauwtre hathe vowched that hee were of a comely figure & a sound & true protestant, the maidservaunte hathe confided unto me that she hath discoueree a straunge booke secreted withyn his beddchambre callid the Racovian catechisme — the wch is fill’d with Ariane blaspheminges & cavils

TNA C 147/395

Slightly less extreme cataloguing today, but still no cakewalk. TNA C 147/395

Over 24,000 entries now have shiny new descriptions in STAC 5. Over halfway there! discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_a...