Difference between revisions of "Countrey Justice"

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	|shorttitle=The Countrey Justice		|shorttitle=The Countrey Justice
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	Recent full blind calf, gold tooled edges; annotation [in law french?] upside-down in brown/black ink on flyleaf.		Recent full blind calf, gold tooled edges; annotation [in law french?] upside-down in brown/black ink on flyleaf.
−	Images of the library's copy of this book are [https://www.flickr.com/photos/wolflawlibrary/sets/72157659732745029 available on Flickr.] View the record for this book in [https://catalog.swem.wm.edu/law/Record/9960 William & Mary's online catalog.]	+	Images of the library's copy of this book are [https://www.flickr.com/photos/wolflawlibrary/sets/72157659732745029 available on Flickr.] View the record for this book in [http://wm-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/01COWM_WM:EVERYTHING:01COWM_WM_ALMA21551845170003196 William & Mary's online catalog.]
	==See also==		==See also==

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Revision as of 11:06, 9 September 2016

by Michael Dalton

The Countrey Justice
Title page from The Countrey Justice, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.
Author	Michael Dalton
Editor	{{{editor}}}
Translator	{{{trans}}}
Published	London: Printed by John Streater, James Flesher, and Henry Twyford, assigns of Richard Atkyns, and Edward Atkyns, esquires
Date	1666
Edition
Language	English
Volumes	{{{set}}} volume set
Pages	[14], 460 (i.e. 456), [10]
Desc.	Folio (28 cm.)
Location	Shelf L-5
	[[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]

Michael Dalton (1564-1644) was a barrister and legal writer, a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and a justice of the peace (JP) in the counties of Essex and, later, Cambridgeshire.^[1] The Countrey Justice, a manual for justices of the peace and local magistrates, remains his best known work.^[2]

The office of justice of the peace originated during the Middle Ages, when the primary responsibility of JPs was to suppress riots and keep the peace.^[3] By the sixteenth century, their power had increased and come to include various judicial and administrative tasks.^[4] Most JPs, however, had no legal training, and a number of justice of the peace manuals were published to provide guidance in the form of clear, comprehensive, and easy to understand instruction.^[5]

The Countrey Justice was among the most popular manuals, and was published in at least twenty editions between 1618 and 1746.^[6] It provided a summary of the current law on a diverse array of subjects, from robbery and murder, to cattle and sheep, and included a particularly detailed description of the proper procedure for prosecuting witches. One of the earliest manuals to be arranged in alphabetical order, Dalton’s book was popular both in England and New England, where it provided a ready and accessible summary of the English common law for the new colonies.^[7]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Recent full blind calf, gold tooled edges; annotation [in law french?] upside-down in brown/black ink on flyleaf.

Images of the library's copy of this book are available on Flickr. View the record for this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

See also

• George Wythe Room
• Officium Vicecomitum: The Office and Avthoritie of Sherifs
• Wythe's Library

References

1. ↑ D.A. Orr, "Dalton, Michael (1564-1644)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed May 21, 2015.
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ↑ Mike Widener, "The Taussig Collection: Justice of the peace manuals," Yale Law School: Lillian Goldman Law Library, April 21, 2014.
4. ↑ Ibid.
5. ↑ Ibid.
6. ↑ Helen L. Hull, "'Lowe and lay ministers of the peace;' The Proliferation of Officeholding Manuals in Early Modern England," in Renaissance Papers 2009, ed. Christopher Cobb (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), 47.
7. ↑ Edgar J. McManus, "Laws for Living Saints," in Law and Liberty in Early New England: Criminal Justice and Due Process, 1620-1692 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 12.