Law, Lawyers and the English Reformation

Thomas More banished lawyers from Utopia. Writing his classic satire in 1516, he said of the Utopians: 'they absolutely exclude from their country all lawyers, who cleverly manipulate cases and cunningly argue legal points'. Tudor lawyers were indeed dubbed 'cunning men' – the parallel was with witchcraft. Yet More was a lawyer himself and the narrator of Utopia, Raphael Hythlodaeus, was also called 'Purveyor of Nonsense'! More, as so often, jested.

In fact, law was fundamental to Tudor society and statecraft. English liberties had been laid down in Magna Carta and its confirmations: 'no man shall be imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, or exiled... save per legem terrae' – 'by the law of the land'. And the English were litigious by nature.