Kings, Barons and Justices

This book is a study of two important and related pieces of thirteenth-century English legislation - the Provisions of Westminster of 1259 and the Statute of Marlborough of 1267 - and is the first on any of the statutes of this period of major legislative change. The Provisions of Westminster were the first major legislation enacted in England after Magna Carta, when Henry III surrendered control of government to a baronial council with an agenda of institutional reform. The Provisions were revised and reissued by the king in 1263, and a further revision in 1267 produced the Statute of Marlborough. Exceptionally good surviving documentation is used to follow the evolution of the individual clauses from initial suggestions for reform, through a series of drafts, to the various versions of the final texts.