'To the King our Sovereign Lord': How to petition the monarch in early Tudor England

The notion that the English monarch would provide 'indifferent justice' to all subjects was so commonplace in sixteenth-century sermons, treatises, and proclamations that the tenets of its practice usually went undefined. Even less is known about the resources, connections, and knowledge required to seek justice from the Crown in the first place. This paper explores the practicalities of litigating at the early Tudor royal household. Drawing on a comprehensive study of the little-studied Court of Requests, the paper lays out findings about litigants' knowledge of this avenue for redress, their employment of lawyers and counsel, and the costs and benefits of litigation. The paper also reflects on the formulation of a social-history project from large legal archives and suggests ways that we might reconceptualise legal histories. It reveals the inevitable fluidity of justice in practice and indicates the need for flexibility in our approaches to this kind of research, too.

Laura Flannigan is currently a lecturer in early modern history at Christ Church, Oxford. She started her studies at the University of York, with a BA in History and an MA in Early Modern History. During her MA year she was part of the Cabinet of Curiosities committee. In 2017, she moved to Newnham College, Cambridge for her PhD, which examined the principles and practices of royal justice in early Tudor England. Her interests lie in the relationship between law, politics, and society and she has published on litigants, the rhetoric of poverty, and justice-giving in the sixteenth century.   

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