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Departing from critical predecessors, this essay treats Ulysses as the protagonist of sorts in James Joyce's battles against suppression. The essays shows that the material book "stood accused as a sort of dangerous instrumentality, a res or thing subject to the strictures of civil forfeiture" and treats it as a "defendant" and a "deodand"—an object removed from its context and put on trial. The essay valorizes the judicial daring that resisted and reversed such treatment.

The trend towards increasing secular interest in jewellery was probably maintained throughout the thirteenth century, though precise dating of individual pieces remains difficult. With only small amounts of gold to be found in the south of France and Hungary, western Europeans continued to depend upon both gold and gems coming by overland routes from or through the Arab world, with Italian merchants acting as intermediaries. In 1257 Henry III was able to attempt to imitate continental kings by issuing gold coins, not to facilitate trade but to attract gold into the mint to back up his loans and pledges, and to use as alms. The care that went into the coins’ design shows that they were thought of as having prestige value, and the decision to represent the king carrying the orb and sceptre was most probably made in homage to one of the issues of his revered predecessor Edward the Confessor; the royal seal was also changed, to a design that adapted Edward’s image of an enthroned king ruling as a judge like Solomon rather than as a military leader with a sword. Henry’s gold coins were only produced in small numbers and for a very short time, but they show that the importance of the symbolism of a currency was still understood, though no more effort was made with the designs of everyday silver coins than in previous reigns. The amount of coinage in circulation is shown both by single finds and hoards, not only in England but in Wales and Scotland as well. Excavation of the church at Capel Maelog, Powys, produced coins of Henry III, Edward I (1272–1307), and Richard II (1377–99), suggesting that the use of English money had spread into Welsh culture. The Welsh kings did not mint their own coins, however, unlike the kings of Scotland, whose coins were allowed to circulate in England just as English ones did north of the border. Presumably exclusion of a rival’s image was no longer a matter of pride. No hoard in Britain hidden during the middle part of the thirteenth century has objects in it to help to establish a chronology for jewellery.

This chapter considers the history of the law governing movable chattels, which was different from the law of real property and of chattels real (such as leases of land). The basic principles changed little over time. The chapter explores the ways in which property in movables could originate, the modes of transfer, the ways in which property could cease, and how far future interests could be created in chattels. The remainder of the chapter deals with the remedies to protect chattels, beginning with detinue and its defects. Actions on the case lay from the fourteenth century for damaging goods. The action on the case called trover and conversion, which rested on a fictitious loss and finding, came from the sixteenth century to be the usual action for misappropriating goods. Though in form an action in tort, it gradually became a proprietary action.