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We might dismiss the narratives that claim that the heritage of the common law stretches to a ‘time out of mind’ (Coke, 1826: x-xii) as fanciful fables told by those seeking to acquire or sustain power. But, as with much forensic make-believe, these are operative fictions, instrumental in shaping the English legal and political imagination. Whilst lubricating the newly centralised machines of government, the common law came to occupy a unique position of power within the emerging modern state. As Coke was keen to remind James I, the king was thought to be beneath no one, only under God and the law (Coke, 1607: 65).1 The common law’s claim to a uniquely antique history guaranteed it as a locus of authority apart from – and arguably superior to – monarchy. Such a characterisation might inspire a ‘classically liberal account of the strong common law as a safeguard against royal absolutism’ (Cormack, 2007 …