History and Theory: The Norman Conquest in Early Stuart Political Thought

Abstract

Orthodoxy maintains that English political thinking before Hobbes was based upon an unphilosophical, precedent-bound reading of history. According to J. G. A. Pocock, Sir Edward Coke typically held that English customary law was pre-historical and that the continuity of English traditions had never been broken by conquest. Conquerors possessed sovereign power; in England there had been no conqueror; so there was no supra-legal sovereign. English liberty was deducible from history.

Pocock's thesis is inadequate since Coke and many others admitted that there had been a conquest. Their claims rested not upon English history but upon theoretical premises characteristic of Continental thought. Coke's concept of custom was itself theory-laden. Rival theories were largely indifferent to the question of the Norman Conquest, a non-issue in political debate.