Highly acclaimed when it was published, this remains a classic. McIlwain [1871-1968], a professor of history at Harvard University for more than three decades, developed-with a particular emphasis on Parliament's role as a judicial body-Pollock and Maitland's thesis from their landmark work The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (1895) that Parliament was not a legislature in the modern sense; it was an administrative and judicial instrument of the crown. Oliver Wendell Holmes praised the work in a May 8, 1918 letter to Harold J. Laski: "... it left me greatly admiring it as an altogether admirable piece of work. It also kept me keenly interested from beginning to end." Howe, Holmes-Laski Letters I:152-153. xxi, 408 pp. Reprint of the first edition.