The printing press had the potential to break the common lawyers' monopoly of legal knowledge. Early-modern England witnessed debates about the desirability of wider dissemination of legal learning. Previous scholarship has identified the long-term trend to increased printing of the law in English, focusing on ideological debates between lawyers and other key actors. Only selected texts and types of material were made available to the wider public before the 1620s. From the later 1620s a wider range of material which had hitherto existed only in manuscript was printed in English. Knowledge of the common law became more commonly available. This article identifies this crucial moment and explains the change. Rather than the ideological questions which are discussed in the existing literature, more mundane causes are identified for the legal profession's reduced control over the transmission of legal knowledge: a shift to the use of English by lawyers themselves, and a loss of professional control over manuscripts. The paper therefore demonstrates an important methodological point: understanding and assessing the history of legal printing requires engagement with older methods of transmitting the law.

中文翻译：

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查理一世统治时期的法律、语言和印刷术：用英语解释普通法的印刷

印刷机有可能打破普通律师对法律知识的垄断。早期现代的英格兰见证了关于更广泛传播法律学习的可取性的辩论。以前的学术研究已经确定了增加用英语印刷法律的长期趋势，重点是律师和其他关键人物之间的意识形态辩论。在 1620 年代之前，只有选定的文本和材料类型可供更广泛的公众使用。从 1620 年代后期开始，迄今为止仅存在于手稿中的更广泛的材料以英文印刷。普通法的知识变得更加普遍。本文确定了这一关键时刻并解释了这一变化。而不是现有文献中讨论的意识形态问题，更普遍的原因被确定为法律专业对法律知识传播的控制减少：律师自己转向使用英语，以及对手稿失去专业控制。因此，本文展示了一个重要的方法论点：理解和评估法律印刷的历史需要使用旧的法律传播方法。