Rhetorics and Realities: the Making of English Medieval Legislation

The legislative capacity of the English monarchy was a significant element in royal governmental power in the later middle ages. This was in part because of the control it allowed the king’s government to exercise over the whole body of the king’s subjects (for some purposes only over their free subjects, but for others over all of those subjects, both free and unfree). The king of England had, and exercised on a regular basis, the power to make legislation that created generally binding lega..