Volume 19: THE INNS OF CHANCERY, 1340-1640.
Edited by Sir John Baker (2017)
Members £45 ($90), non-members £60 ($120), plus dispatch costs.
ISBN: 0 85423 227 7

The ten or so inns of chancery were all founded in the century after 1340, and for two or three hundred years were an important constituent part of the so-called third university of England. Their names are mostly still familiar as London place-names, though few of their buildings are still standing. Most of what has been written about them relates to the period after they ceased to be seriously involved in legal education. Recent research on manuscript sources has revealed more information about their earlier history than was previously available, although their origins – like those of the inns of court – remain tantalisingly obscure. This volume sets out what is now known about the inns of chancery in their heyday as schools of law, and includes texts of all the surviving written regulations by which they were governed, some of which have only recently come to light.?


Volume 18: THE MEN OF COURT 1440 TO 1550: A PROSOPOGRAPHY OF THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY AND THE COURTS OF LAW
Compiled by Sir John Baker, 2 vols. (2012)
members £95 ($180), non-members £125 ($240), plus dispatch costs.
ISBN: 0 85423 137 4

This monumental work in two very large volumes is a biographical dictionary of every named person connected with the law: all known members of the inns of court and chancery (which included many non-lawyers), and all the attorneys and officers of the central courts. A veritable Who’s Who in the Law during this important transitional period, with well over 10,000 entries identifying as far as possible each individual, and with information relating to his social position, family, local roots, armorial bearings, and portraits; and going back before 1440 or after 1550 where a life extended beyond the qualifying period. Much of the information, never before published, has been gleaned from suits for dues brought by the inns against their members, supplemented from the inns’ own records, the plea rolls and other sources. A fuller description and an order form may be found by clicking here.


Volume 17: KING’S BENCH AND COMMON BENCH IN THE REIGN OF HENRY III
Compiled by the late C.A.F. MEEKINGS and Dr DAVID CROOK, formerly of The National Archives (2010)
members £35 ($70), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 132 3

The volume provides the fullest account of the courts in this formative period of the common law as revealed in the extensive surviving records; with a detailed account of the records themselves and their hazardous history. The volume is in three parts. The introduction is a complete exposition of and guide to the records, their physical nature, development, custody, arrangement and means of reference. There follows a detailed narrative history of the court coram rege, later the King’s Bench, with the careers of its individual justices from its revival to the end of the reign, with particular coverage of the period 1239 to 1258. The third part of the volume consists of a term-by-term list of the sessions of the court de banco, the Common Bench. A fuller description of the volume (in Word format) may be found by clicking here.


Volume 16: ENGLISH LEGAL MANUSCRIPTS FORMERLY IN THE COLLECTION OF SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS
By Sir JOHN BAKER, QC, FBA, Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge (2008)
members £35 ($70), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 131 5

Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872) spent his life and his fortune seeking and gathering from all over Europe the greatest collection of manuscripts ever in private hands, over 40,000 items. The Phillipps collection, which was dispersed after his death, was never properly catalogued. The present volume lists all of the legal manuscripts that were in bound volumes, the law books. It also includes some letters, charters, conveyances, court rolls, state papers and the like where these are of particular interest. A fuller description of the volume (in Word format) may be found by clicking here.


Volume 15: CATALOGUE OF THE LEGAL MANUSCRIPTS OF ANTHONY TAUSSIG
By Sir JOHN BAKER, QC, FBA, Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge, and ANTHONY TAUSSIG, barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. (2007).
members £35 ($70), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 205 2

The Taussig manuscripts form the most important collection of English legal manuscripts until recently in private hands, but now at Yale University. The contents range from the only known privately-held manuscript of Bracton to important collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century correspondence (notably that of Sir Michael Foster, Sir William Blackstone, Lord Thurlow, and William Tidd, the celebrated special pleader). There are fifty illustrations, providing legible specimens of many different kinds of legal manuscripts and legal hands.


Volume 14: THE LETTERS OF SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE: 1744–1780
Edited by Professor W. R. PREST, of the University of Adelaide. (2006).
members £30 ($60), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 190 0

Though best known for his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England, these letters, mostly unpublished, show Blacksone’s extraordinarily diverse range of interests and involvements. Beyond his career as a law student, barrister, Oxford don, jurist, and judge, the letters show him as an antiquary, bibliophile, historian, literary critic, poet, administrator, politician, member of parliament, and law reformer; and more personally as father and husband, colleague, and friend. The letters are thus a primary source for the cultural, legal, political, and social history of Hanoverian England. The editor has provided an extensive introduction with a chronology of Blackstone’s life, the sources and locations of all 183 letters, and a list of correspondents.


Volume 13: READERS AND READINGS IN THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY
By Professor J. H. BAKER, QC, LL.D, FBA, Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge. (2000).
members £30 ($60) , non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 150 1

The inns of court and chancery in their heyday (between the mid-fourteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries) were one of the largest and most influential law schools in the history of the world, whose teaching was in a real sense law. Yet changes in the character of the common law and its study have placed its learning largely beyond reach for the last three hundred years. This book is the culmination of research—over many years and two continents—for texts of the lectures delivered in that law school, and of notes derived them. The first part contains tables of readers for each of the inns, with references to what is known about their lectures, and brief biographies. The second part is a bibliography of nearly two thousand texts, mostly manuscripts dating between 1400 and 1700. While there will inevitably be omissions in such a work, it is hoped that it will open up the further study of this forgotten genre of common-law study. A fuller description of the volume (in Word format) may be found by clicking here.


Volume 12: THE ADMISSIONS REGISTERS OF BARNARD’S INN, 1620–1869.
Edited by Dr C. W. BROOKS, Department of History, University of Durham. (1996).
members £30 ($60) , non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 139 0

The inns of chancery for at least two hundred years were part of a common-law university, and for somewhat longer provided accommodation for attorneys. The membership register of this particular inn during its last 250 years is preserved in Gray’s Inn, and the editor has added biographical details (especially of the attorneys) where they have been discovered. This is in itself an important work of biographical reference, but the introduction also contains the first scholarly history of Barnard’s Inn from beginning to end. There are a number of plates showing, amongst other things, what the inn looked like.


11. THE LETTERS OF FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND, Vol. II.
Edited by Dr P. ZUTSHI, Keeper of Manuscripts, Cambridge University Library. (1995).
members £30 ($60), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 134 X

This volume adds another 361 letters to the corpus edited by Fifoot in 1965 (Vol. 1). Some of them have previously appeared in print in various scattered publications, though most are published here for the first time. The editor has added introductory essays on ‘Maitland the Man’ and ‘Maitland the Historian’.


Volume 10: THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND, 1272–1990.
Compiled by Sir JOHN SAINTY. (1993).
members £30 ($60), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 129 3

This is the first complete and accurate list of the judges of the superior courts in England, with their precise dates of office, and is an indispensable work of reference for all scholars working with English cases. It comprises the justices of the two benches, barons of the Exchequer, Masters of the Rolls, Vice-Chancellors, Lords Justices of Appeal, justices of the High Court, and Lords of Appeal in Ordinary.


Volume 9: THE DIARY OF SIR RICHARD HUTTON, 1614–1639.
Edited by Dr W. R. PREST of the University of Adelaide. (1991).
members £30 ($60), non-members £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 124 2

These legal memoranda, written in a mixture of law French and English, were kept by Hutton during his days as a serjeant at law and justice of the Common Pleas. They include eye-witness accounts of public events, notes of speeches and legal ceremonies, and frankly drawn characters of legal and political contemporaries.


Volume 8: THE TEACHING OF ROMAN LAW IN ENGLAND AROUND 1200.
By the late Professor FRANCIS DE ZULUETA, sometime Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford,
and Professor PETER STEIN, FBA, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge. (1990).
members: £30 ($60), non-members (£40) ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 124 2

The text of a late twelfth-century course of lectures on Justinian’s Institutes, formerly associated with Master Vacarius of Oxford but apparently given by one of his pupils in the late 1190s. Professor Stein’s introduction illuminates the teaching of Roman civil law in Anglo-Norman England.


Volume 7: A LIST OF ENGLISH LAW OFFICERS AND KING’S COUNSEL AND HOLDERS OF PATENTS OF PRECEDENCE.
Compiled by Sir JOHN SAINTY. (1987).
members: £30 ($60), non-members: £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 213 3

This is a fully documented list of the names, dates of appointment and periods of office of the king’s serjeants, attorneys-general, solicitors-general, king’s advocates, king’s counsel, and holders of patents of precedence, from the earliest times down to 1984.


Volume 6: CHRISTOPHER St. GERMAN ON CHANCERY AND STATUTE.
Edited by Dr J. A. GUY, Department of History, University of Bristol. (1985).
members: £20 ($40), non-members: £24 ($48).
ISBN: 0 85423 208 7

The volume is a companion to J. L. Barton’s edition of St. German’s Doctor and Student, published by the Society in 1974. It contains the “Replication” to Doctor and Student by an anonymous “serjeant-at-law”, together with a controversial reply, “A Little Treatise concerning Writs of Subpoena”, now known to be by St. German himself. The edition includes proposals for parliamentary legislation arising from St. German’s Little Treatise Called the New Additions, proposals laid before Henry VIII’s government in 1530 and 1531, together with new information both on this important author’s manuscript writings and his role as an adviser and polemicist in the 1530s.


Volume 5: THE ORDER OF SERJEANTS AT LAW, 1383–l875.
By Dr J. H. BAKER, Fellow of St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. (1984).
members: £30 ($60), non-members: £40 ($80).
ISBN: 0 85423 203 6

Previous lists of serjeants, such as Dugdale’s, were based solely on the writs of summons, and this led to inaccuracies. The degree was conferred not by writ but by corporeal ceremonies, the oldest of which may hold clues to the origins of the Order of the Coif in the fourteenth century. The First Part lists recorded creation ceremonies as noted in reports, diaries, chronicles, and the prothonotaries’ remembrances, collated with the relevant public records. It gives precise dates of creation, lists of patrons, and a list of mottoes. The Second Part contains select unpublished descriptions of creations, and texts of the speeches made to new serjeants. An introduction traces the history of the order in outline from the thirteenth century to 1921.


Volume 4: PLACITA CORONE or La Corone Pledee devant Justices.
Edited by J. M. KAYE, Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford. (1966).
members: £20 ($40), non-members: £24 ($48).
ISBN: 0 85423 115 3

This volume contains the text and translation of two radically differing versions of a hitherto unprinted treatise on criminal procedure written in the late thirteenth century. The treatise is primarily a set of precedents for the conduct of appeals of felony before itinerant justices, and contains also cases illustrative of gaol delivery procedure. The work was probably intended for laymen – justices and officials – rather than pleaders or advocates. The introduction deals with the manuscripts, the authorship and date of the treatise, and with selected points of legal interest. An appendix contains a transcription of a second, less important, treatise called Tractatus de Corona, an epitome of certain passages in Bracton.


Volume 3: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY.
Edited by D. S. BLAND, MA Assistant Director of Extra-Mural Studies, Liverpool University.
With an introduction by Sir CECIL CARR, kcb, qc, fba. (1965).
members: £20 ($40), non-members: £24 ($48).
ISBN: 0 85423 116 1

An annotated list of over 800 items divided into: Manuscript Sources, General Works, The Temple, Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Inns of Chancery, Serjeant’s Inn, King’s Inns (Dublin), Drama, Literature, Education, Nineteenth-Century Reform, The Legal Profession.


Volume 2: BRACTON: THE PROBLEM OF HIS TEXT.
Edited by H. G. RICHARDSON, fba.,
Being an expansion of a Lecture delivered before the Selden Society in the Hall of
Gray’s Inn on March 28, 1961. (1965).
members: £20 ($40) , non-members: £24 ($48).
ISBN: 0 85423 117 X

The work is in two parts. Part I, in eight chapters, deals with problems of Bracton’s text. Part II gives Bracton’s literary sources other than those printed by Maitland in Bracton and Azo, the text of Bracton being printed on facing pages. Specimen manuscripts are included. There is also a bibliography, and an index of names and subjects.


Volume 1: THE LETTERS OF FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND.
Edited by C. H. S. FIFOOT, FBA, Reader in Common Law to the Council of Legal Education; Honorary
Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. (1965).
members: £20 ($40), Non-members: £24 ($48).
ISBN: 0 85423 120 X

The edition comprises 500 letters from Maitland. These were all that had then been traced save for the few that are only the bare record of business appointments. They are annotated as fully as possible and there are three short introductions to different periods of Maitland’s life. But care is taken not to stand between him and the reader. A second volume was published in 1995 as Vol.11 in this series.