Setting the Stage

This chapter provides a synthesis of the literature on the writing of the Bracton treatise and brief biographies of the justices and clerks who wrote it. A number of scholars have written about Bracton and the process by which it was written and re-written over a period of roughly half a century. There is a great deal of scholarly debate about who wrote Bracton and when it was written. This chapter synthesizes that research into a narrative of the various stages of writing the treatise, and then attempts to connect those stages to the careers of the royal justices who we know or suspect worked on it.