Water law in Star Chamber
‘A plotte of the landes about Ashebourne’, Derbyshire. 1556–1557 (Folger Shakespeare Library) One difficulty of English water-law history is the dearth of reported water cases predating the nineteenth century. Fortunately young historians are doing good work in digging up archival documentation of water litigation. We heard a few years ago from Leona Skelton about her interesting work on the Tyne River Court, and now I'd like to note Lehua Yim's work on a sixteenth century water law dispute litigated in the Court of Star Chamber: "A Watercourse ‘in Variance’: Re-situating a Sixteenth-Century Legal Map from Ashbourne, Derbyshire" , published last year in Imago Mundi. The abstract: Law-related English local maps, especially those dating from the early- to mid-sixteenth century, remain in need of both extensive and close study. In this article, a hand-drawn sketch map in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, is re-contextualized in relation to documents connec...