William Searle Holdsworth

Holdsworth's main work, with a first edition of the first book in 1903, was A History of English Law, gradually expanded to cover everything from Ancient Britain to 1875 over his career.

1972), a book version of Holdsworth's Storrs Lectures at Yale Law School, he argued that historians should pay closer attention to the novels of Charles Dickens as source material about the workings of English law and legal institutions; it contains a thoughtful and sensitive analysis of Dickens's novel Bleak House as an illuminating examination of the Chancery system.

The work begins with Anglo-Saxon times, and it is an account of legal procedure and court organisation down to the Judicature Acts of 1875 and of the important phases of substantive law through the 18th century.

Holdsworth's history has been criticised as involving lapses from fully modern scholarly standards, and is consequently treated with some caution by some current legal historians.

The establishment of the presidency of the Holdsworth Club as an annual office, involving the sole obligations of attending a dinner and giving a lecture, led to the Faculty gaining a distinguished line of visiting speakers, (which by 1948 already included two Lord Chancellors and two Masters of the Rolls).

[9] All initiates to the Holdsworth Society must take a solemn Sacramentum in order to be admitted to the Final Honour Schools programme, a peculiarity of St John's College's requirements for enrolment.

The taking of the Holdsworth Sacramentum represents an important moment in an undergraduate's life, for until it is completed they cannot officially progress beyond Moderations (first year examinations) and be considered for the BA Jurisprudence.