WORMALD, (Charles) Patrick 1947-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born July 9, 1947, in Neston, Cheshire, England; died September 29, 2004, in Oxford, England. Historian, educator, and author. Wormald, a respected scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, was an authority on the Anglo-Saxon period in England. He obtained his higher education from Balliol College and All Souls College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in 1969 and an M.A. in 1973, respectively. He then lectured in medieval history at Glasgow University until 1989, as well as being a research reader in the humanities at the British Academy from 1987 to 1989. Wormald joined Christ Church as a stipendiary lecturer in 1989 and became an student and tutor of modern history there from 1990 to 2001. Having written about his favorite subject in The Anglo-Saxons (1982), on which he collaborated with two other authors, Wormald began planning his most ambitious and highly acclaimed work in the 1980s. Extensive and insightful research would eventually lead to the publication of the first of his planned two-volume book on early English law, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (1999). The text was considered an extremely valuable breakthrough in helping to explain the legal system during a period from which most documentation has been lost. Wormald, who suffered from alcoholism and depression, was in the midst of the second volume, From God's Law to Common Law, when he died.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), October 7, 2004, p. 42.

Times (London, England), October 6, 2004, p. 61.