Bench and Bureaucracy: The Public Career of Sir Julius Caesar 1580-1636 By Lamar Hill A biographical study of Caesar, one of the leading English lawyers of the early 17th century, showing how he exemplified the emergence of a new kind of Crown service, the legal bureaucracy. ISBN-13: 9780227679067 Specifications: 234x156mm, 336pp, Hardback Price: £50.00 • US$102.50 Publication: March 1988 Order this Title Now

About this Book

The late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods witnessed the emergence of a transitional figure in the crown's service, a person who was not yet a bureaucrat in the modern sense but who nonetheless acted with a considerable degree of independence from the crown. Sir Julius Caesar was an exemplar of this new kind of officer of state, and his career assumes even greater interest because he was also the most prominent civil lawyer of his generation.

Hill examines the career of Caesar over half a century, observing the inner workings of patronage, the day-to-day problems of royal service, the quarrels between rival crown servants, the conflicts between common law and civil courts, and, more personally, the way in which an ambitious man could build a dynasty for his sons.

Caesar occupied such judicial positions as Judge of the Admiralty, Master of Requests, Master in Chancery, and Master of the Rolls. He also served in administrative positions as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Privy Councillor. Through him, Hill reveals these institutions at some of their most critical points in history: Admiralty under the stress of the privateering war against Spain; requests when that hapless court was not only subject to prohibitions, but saw its very existence threatened; and the Exchequer in the course of its fiscal crisis that culminated in the abortive negotiations over Salisbury's Great Contract in 1510.

About the Author

L.M. Hill was Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on Sir Julius Caesar, and edited Sir Julius Caesar's The Ancient State, Authoritie, and Proceedings of the Court of Requests.