Difference between revisions of "Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown"

Revision as of 07:48, 16 July 2013

by William Hawkins

[Hawkins] is best known in the legal profession for his Pleas of the Crown (1716–21), a copy of which he presented to Oriel. This treatise may indeed have been his principal qualification for the coif. It was the first substantial exposition of English criminal law to be printed since that by Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), and it represented a distinct advance in terms of analysis and detail. The masterpiece by Sir Matthew Hale (1609–1676), the Historia placitorum coronae, was not published until 1736, and even then it did not supplant Hawkins, being an earlier composition. In the third edition of Hawkins, in 1739, references to Hale were inserted by G. L. Scott. Posthumous editions appeared in 1762, 1771 (by Thomas Leach), 1787, 1795, and 1824 (by John Curwood), and a summary was published in 1728 (second edition 1770). Hawkins also produced a new edition of the Statutes at Large in 1734–35, which was soon superseded by the edition of John Cay and Owen Ruffhead. ^[1]

Bibliographic Information

Author: William Hawkins, (1681/2-1750)

Title: A Treatise Of The Pleas Of The Crown, Or, A System Of The Principal Matters Relating To That Subject: Digested Under Their Proper Heads

Published: London, In the Savoy: Printed by Eliz. Nutt, (executrix of J. Nutt, assignee of E. Sayer, esq;) for J. Walthoe and J. Walthoe, jun., 1716-1726.

Edition:

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

External Links

Google Books

References

1. ↑ J. H. Baker, ‘Hawkins, William (1681/2–1750)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 7 June 2013