Making Law and Recording It: Part II

Abstract

John Selden’s historico-philological approach tends to prove that religious authority has its origins in civil institutions and their legal procedures, and to that extent his “literary” (philological) encounter with ancient texts helps determine the nature of law. Selden was an active member of the Long Parliament, chairing or serving on many committees, but there are very few transcripts of his speeches and none of his debates on the floor of the House of Commons. His only surviving debates from that decade took place in the Westminster Assembly of Divines, to which he was appointed by Parliament as a lay member. That makes them especially valuable. Even so, many of the transcripts are so lacunose that they are indecipherable as they appear in those volumes. This chapter is devoted to filling in the gaps and making the speeches coherent by finding their contexts in Selden’s scholarly works.