Liberty Against the Law

In this erudite account Christopher Hill argues that the law in seventeenth-century England was used as an instrument of oppression. The enclosures, loss of many traditional rights and draconian punishments for minor transgressions changed the lives of the peasantry and created a landless class of wage labourers. Christopher Hill explores the immense social changes that occurred and the expressions of liberty against the law through, for example, the literary culture of the times and the hero-worship of the outlaw.