This is a most important book on the origins of English common law, albeit one that is difficult to read and comprehend at first glance. Milsom challenges the prevailing view, championed by the great English legal historian Frederic William Maitland, that the common law was the product of Henry II's conscious efforts. Instead, Milsom advances a much more organic view, that the common law grew up as the haphazard product of individual English lawyers, each championing his individual clients' causes before the royal courts. Milsom's thesis corresponds in large measure to the school of jurisprudence known as legal realism, holding that the common law evolves as the unconscious and unintended product of adjudication.
For anyone doing work in the early history of the common law, Milsom, along with Pollock and Maitland's "History of English Law," is absolutely indispensable. It's not easy reading, nor should it be. Whether the book is worth the effort or not, I leave to the judgment of each reader. ( )