English Arbitration and Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century

Our Early Modern period runs from 1700 to 1815. England was never at peace. The Act of Settlement 1701, whatever it did for the Constitution, did not end the fighting between English and Scots. Bonnie Prince Charlie was not seen off until Culloden in 1748. George Washington became president of a new country in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. Britain was intermittently at war with France or Spain. Yet the primary sources show that parties with disputes got on with their resolution in the same old ways, by arbitration and mediation.After an introduction, describing the social, economic, political and legal background, the individual documents which make up the primary sources are each examined, including court records, law reports, newspapers and memoirs. The practices of mediation and arbitration across various sectors of eighteenth-century England are explored. First the services offered by the State, primarily by Justices of the Peace but also by all the courts. Then the bulk of the work is devoted to private arbitration and mediation, including extensive sections on Commerce, Labour Relations, the London Theatre, Families and Property, Architects and Engineers, Sport and Betting, with an extended section devoted to the work of women. The lives of individuals in all strata of English society are revealed. Finally, a long chapter describes what has been called legalisation and professionalisation, showing the increasing involvement of lawyers.

All three authors are fellows at the Institute of Advance Legal Studies, University of London.Derek Roebuck has written 12 books on the history of arbitration, of which this is the fifth on England: Early English Arbitration; Mediation and Arbitration in the Middle Ages; The Golden Age of Arbitration and Arbitration and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century England, are all published by HOLO Books, The Arbitration Press, Oxford.Dr Francis Calvert Boorman is an historian of locality and London, as well as arbitration. He is editor of The Victoria History of Middlesex: St Clement Danes, 1660-1900.Dr Rhiannon Markless is an archival researcher and legal historian. She is author of Gender, Crime and Discretion in Yorkshire, 1735-1775: Decision-Making and the Criminal Justice System.