Early English Laws: About us

The aims of the project are:

To edit or re-edit and translate more than 150 early English legal texts and to provide each with introductions and full commentary on all aspects of the texts, language, and law.
To transform the way in which these improved texts can be used by scholars;
To provide a comprehensive resource on early law, including introductory essays on issues of law, language, archaeology, paleography, and codicology, descriptions of all manuscripts holding legal texts and used for this edition, glossaries in Old English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman, and a regularly updated bibliography and guide to the literature, with links to relevant philological and archaeological sites.
By adding an ‘interactive collaborative component’ to the site, to allow interpretative contributions across the spectrum from professional scholars to interested users so that the laws will be better comprehended by subsequent users.

To encourage new work in several disciplines, both in the UK and internationally;
To establish a collaborative mode of working which will raise the quality of the product, ensure the long-term sustainability of the project and serve as a template for other projects of this type.
To focus the work of teams of scholars - established and early career academics as well as postgraduate students - in this field by providing a common site for investigation and editorial contributions.
To bring together international expertise and to encourage collaborations, including the organisation of three workshops, one to be held in the US, one in the UK and one in Europe.

To increase and improve access for scholars to key sources for English law and Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin culture;
To add value to other digital resources for the Anglo-Saxon and early medieval period by adding interconnectivity;
To open up hitherto inaccessible material to students at all levels who might not have knowledge of Latin, Old English, or Anglo-Norman French, but particularly post-16;
To allow cross-searching of this material with data published in other projects hosted by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (including, for example, the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England).

Early English Laws Project