England has long been famous for its Common Law system and this has spread over much of the world through the influence of the British Empire. Yet there have been few studies of how it worked at the local level in past centuries. Based on intensive studies of the records of one English village in Essex, (Earls Colne) and on the wider court records, Alan Macfarlane and his colleagues have reconstructed the life of an Elizabethan woman and of her battles with some of the most powerful men in England.