The Rise of the Barristers A Social History of the English Bar, 1590-1640 [Paperback]

The barristers were the most powerful and prosperous professional group in early modern England. This book systematically examines the barrister's working life during a half-century of rapid growth and structural change within the legal profession. Prest analyzes patterns of professional recruitment, training, and mobility and explores the participation of barristers in the cultural, religious, and political life of Elizabethan and early Stuart England. This is the first book to be published in the Oxford Studies in Social History, under the general editorship of Keith Thomas. The series, which will cover all periods and parts of the world, will include original works of scholarship on a broad range of subjects of interest to historians as well as to scholars working in related fields.

This book can scarcely be commended too much for what it achieves in its own terms. --American Historical Review

Immensely valuable. --Journal of Modern History

An innovative and fundamental contribution to the history of the legal profession and...the new base for future enquiry. --Times Literary Supplement

A multi-faceted portrait of common lawyers in early modern England. Equally importantly, he balances his information with comparisons to the situations of lawyers in early modern Europe and of civil lawyers, clerics, physicians, and governmental bureaucrats in early modern England....An important book. --Albion

This valuable and, in many ways, pioneering study should further both understanding and discussion....Who the barristers were and the nature of their life and work is now infinitely clearer. --Journal of Interdisciplinary History