Charles Patrick Wormald (9 July 1947–29 September 2004) was an English historian.

Patrick Wormald was born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald. He attended Eton College as a King's Scholar and studied Modern History at Balliol College where he was tutored by Maurice Keen. He won a seven year Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.

He taught Early Medieval History at the University of Glasgow from 1974 to 1988, where he met and married fellow-historian Jenny Brown. They had two sons, but their marriage was dissolved in 2001.

In 1989 he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of Christ Church where he tutored students of Medieval History. His greatest work, which took many years to produce, was The making of English law, the first volume of which was published in 1999.

In 2009, a collection of essays written by leading scholars in Wormald's honour was published under the title Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, edited by Stephen Baxter et al. The book is introduced by articles on Wormald's person and his academic output.

Notes

1. Ashgate publisher

Select bibliography

• 2006, The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian, ed. Baxter, Stephen.
• 2005, "Kings and kingship" in Fouracre, Paul (ed.), The new Cambridge medieval history: Vol. 1 c.500–c.700.
• 2003, "The Leges Barbarorum : law and ethnicity in the post-Roman West" in Goetz, Jarnut, & Pohl (eds), Regna and gentes : the relationship between late antique and early medieval peoples and kingdoms in the transformation of the Roman world.
• 1999, The making of English law: King Alfred to the twelfth century, vol. 1: Legislation and its limits.
• 1999, Legal culture in the early medieval west: law as text, image and experience.
• 1998, "Frederic William Maitland and the earliest English law" in Law and History Review, 16.
• 1996, "The emergence of the Regnum Scottorum: a Carolingian hegemony" in Crawford, Barbara (ed.), Scotland in dark age Britain.
• 1993, How do we know so much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?
• 1986, "Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship : Some Further Thoughts" in Szarmach, Paul E. & Oggins, Virginia D. (eds), Sources of Anglo-Saxon culture.
• 1983, with Bullough, Donald & Collins, Roger (eds), Ideal and reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: studies presented to John Michael Wallace-Hadrill.
• 1982, "The Age of Bede and Æthelbald", "The age of Offa and Alcuin", & "The Ninth Century" in Campbell, James (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons.
• 1978, "Æthelred the lawmaker" in Hill, David (ed.), Ethelred the Unready : papers from the millenary conference.
• 1977, "Lex scripta and verbum regis: legislation and Germanic kingship from Euric to Cnut" in Sawyer, P.H. & Wood, Ian N. (eds), Early medieval kingship.

Obituaries