Detective Fiction in the Archives: Court Records and the Uses of Law in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Historians are often compared to detectives, searching for clues and uncovering connections until at last the truth is found and the mystery is solved. 1 The fictional detective works the streets and the historian works the archives, but the process of building a case and of making logical inferences from scattered clues is sometimes remarkably similar. Historians, however, are no longer permitted the certainty that marked the conclusions of classic detective fiction: we are rarely, if ever, sure anymore about who dunnit (whatever "it" might be) or why. This constant epistemic doubt can be