Definition
Hengham refers to Ralph de Hengham (d. 1311), a medieval English judge and legal scholar credited as the reputed author of two influential Latin treatises on common law procedure: the Summa Magna (Great Summary) and the Summa Parva (Small Summary). In legal research contexts, "Hengham" is used as a shorthand reference to these treatises collectively, much as "Bracton" or "Glanvill" denotes both the author and the work associated with that name. The treatises concern proceedings in civil actions and are among the earliest systematic treatments of English common law practice. Hengham served as Chief Justice of the King's Bench and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas during the reign of Edward I, giving his writings the authority of direct judicial experience.
Common Confusion
The attribution of the Summa Magna and Summa Parva to Hengham has been treated as settled in most historical legal literature, but modern scholarship has questioned the extent of his authorship and whether both parts share a single author. Researchers should not treat "Hengham" as an unambiguous single-author citation in the way one might cite a modern treatise. The name functions more reliably as a bibliographic identifier than as a verified authorial claim.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "Hengham" in historical sources are almost always looking at a citation to one of the two treatises rather than a biographical reference to the judge himself. The distinction between Summa Magna and Summa Parva matters: the two parts differ in scope and subject matter, and a source citing Hengham without specifying which part may require verification against the underlying text.
The treatises circulated in manuscript form for centuries before John Selden published them in 1616 with original editorial notes. Selden's edition is the standard printed reference and the version most likely to appear in early modern legal literature. Any pre-Selden reference to Hengham in a manuscript source should be approached with awareness that scribal variation and interpolation were common in the transmission of medieval legal texts of this type.
The Summa Magna and Summa Parva are significant corpus connections for researchers working on the development of English civil procedure in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. They sit chronologically between Bracton's De Legibus (mid-thirteenth century) and the Year Books, and they address the mechanics of pleading and action in a more practically oriented register than Bracton's more theoretical treatment. Researchers tracing the evolution of specific forms of action or pleading rules should treat the Hengham treatises as a bridge source between the grand treatise tradition and the practitioner literature of the later medieval period.
Edward II and Edward III period references to an English translation mentioned in historical sources have not been definitively confirmed by modern scholarship. Researchers who encounter what appears to be a vernacular version of Hengham should treat its dating and translation provenance as unresolved.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core reference: Hengham as the "reputed author" of the Summa Magna and Summa Parva, described as "a collection of notes relating to proceedings in actions," with notice of Selden's edition and its accompanying original notes. Burrill's characterization of the work as a collection of notes is accurate to the treatises' practical, procedural character, though it understates their influence on subsequent common law development.
The qualifier "reputed author" in Burrill reflects a degree of scholarly caution appropriate to medieval attribution generally. Historical legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century were working from the Selden edition and from secondary accounts by legal historians such as John Reeves, whose History of the English Law provides the characterization Burrill cites. Researchers should be aware that Reeves's account, while standard for its era, predates the manuscript scholarship that has refined understanding of the treatises' origins and transmission.
No significant divergence among historical dictionary sources is present here, as Hengham is treated consistently as an entry of legal biography and bibliography rather than as a term of art requiring doctrinal analysis.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: History of English Common Law; Medieval Legal Treatises; Forms of Action.