Virginia Gazette (Rind), 31 January 1771

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Wythe's plea in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg) on January 31, 1771, for the return of a volume of Barrow's Reports [sic] missing from the Capitol.
Second notice in the Virginia Gazette, 7 February 1771, with the typesetter's error corrected.

For three weeks in early 1771, George Wythe ran a notice in the Williamsburg newspaper, the Virginia Gazette, requesting the return of a missing third volume of Burrow's Reports:[1]

I MISS a third volume of BURROW's REPORTS. Whether it was lent out I forget. Perhaps some Gentleman's servant carried it from the capitol by mistake last October court. Whoever will let me know where it is, I shall be obliged to him for the information.

GEORGE WYTHE.[2]

The notice ran from January 31 through February 14, 1771. In the first notice, the title was misprinted as "Barrow's" Reports. The typesetter corrected the error after the first week.

Oddly, volume three of Burrow's Reports (covering terms 2 G. 3 1761 through 6 G. 3 1766) was not published until 1771, so it seems the reason Wythe found the third volume lacking from the collection in the Capitol was that it had not yet arrived in the Colonies.[3]

See also

References

  1. James Burrow, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench, Since the Time of Lord Mansfield's Coming to Preside in It, Vol. 3 (London: Printed by His Majesty's Law-Printers for Barnes Tovey, [successor to Mr John Worrall], 1771).
  2. Virginia Gazette (Rind) January 31, 1771, 3; February 7, 1771, 4; and February 14, 1771, 4.
  3. The first volume of Burrow's Reports has a second title page which declares it is "Part the fourth. Volume the first," so Wythe may have believed there were more volumes already published. John Randolph (1727/28-1784), writing to the printer in London in 1771, also believed there were four volumes of Burrow. There were eventually five volumes total, published between 1766 and 1780.