Difference between revisions of "Reports of Divers Special Cases"

Revision as of 10:01, 9 September 2016

by Sir Thomas Raymond

Reports of Divers Special Cases
Title page from Reports of Divers Special Cases, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.
Author	Sir Thomas Raymond
Editor
Translator
Published	Dublin: Printed by James Moore
Date	1793
Edition	Third
Language	English
Volumes	volume set
Pages	viii, 506 (i.e. 496), [66]
Desc.	8vo. (23 cm.)
Location	Shelf E-4
	[[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]

Sir Thomas Raymond (1626/7-1683) was a judge of the King’s Bench in the late seventeenth century. He entered Gray’s Inn in 1645, one year before he graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge. Raymond was called to the bar in 1651 and joined the serjeants of law in 1677. He was elevated to the bench as a baron of the exchequer in 1679 and received a knighthood later that year. He was transferred to the common pleas in February of 1680 and to the King’s Bench two months later. Raymond died in 1683 and was survived by his son Robert, who would eventually serve on the King’s Bench as chief justice.^[1]

Raymond’s volume of case reports, Reports of Divers Special Cases Adjudged in the Courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, in the Reign of King Charles II was first published in 1696.^[2] Little commentary exists on the quality of these reports, but they are cited in several court opinions, including early U.S. court decisions. One such decision, Georgia v. Brailford, is one of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the first involving a jury.^[3] The court opinion there cited to Whaley v. Anderson, specifically to precedent relating to forfeiture of property by a joint tenant.^[4] Another Supreme Court case to cite Raymond is MacDonogh v. Dannery, a 1796 case involving a maritime dispute between England and France.^[5]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "T. Raymond’s" and given by Thomas Jefferson to Dabney Carr. The precise edition owned by Wythe is unknown. Folio editions were published in 1696 and 1743; an octavo third edition appeared in 1793.^[6] All four of the Wythe Collection sources (Goodwin's pamphlet^[7], Dean's Memo^[8], Brown's Bibliography^[9] and George Wythe's Library^[10] on LibraryThing) list the second edition of Raymond's Reports, perhaps based on the existence of that edition in Jefferson's library.^[11] Goodwin comments that a Wythe biographer includes Raymond's Reports in a list of works recommended by Wythe to Jefferson.^[12] Dean notes that Thomas Raymond's case reports were referenced in both John Marshall's law notes^[13] and Thomas Jefferson's commonplace book.^[14] Brown includes the reference to Marshall's law notes and adds citations to Wythe's report for the Case upon the Statute for Distribution.^[15] To represent this title in the George Wythe Collection, the Wolf Law Library moved a copy of the third edition (1793) from the general rare books collection, although Wythe more likely owned one of the earlier editions of Reports of Divers Special Cases.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Rebound in reddish tan buckram.

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
• Jefferson Inventory
• Wythe's Library

References

1. ↑ Stuart Handley, "Raymond, Sir Thomas (1626/7–1683)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed March 4, 2015.
2. ↑ Ibid.
3. ↑ The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, ed. Maeva Marcus et. al., vol. 6, Cases: 1790-1795 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 73.
4. ↑ Ibid.
5. ↑ The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800, ed. Maeva Marcus et. al., vol. 7, Cases: 1796-1797 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 38.
6. ↑ English Short Title Catalog, http://estc.bl.uk, search of "Thomas Raymond" and "Reports" reveals the two folio editions and the octavo edition from Dublin.
7. ↑ Mary R. M. Goodwin, The George Wythe House: Its Furniture and Furnishings (Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, 1958), XLV.
8. ↑ Memorandum from Barbara C. Dean, Colonial Williamsburg Found., to Mrs. Stiverson, Colonial Williamsburg Found. (June 16, 1975), 13 (on file at Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary).
9. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012, rev. May, 2014) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433.
10. ↑ LibraryThing, s.v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on March 25, 2015.
11. ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, (Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress, 1952-1959), 2:341 [no.2064].
12. ↑ Goodwin cites William Edwin Hemphill, "George Wythe the Colonial Briton: A Biographical Study of the Pre-Revolutionary Era in Virginia" (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1937), 126, but that page refers to Lord Robert Raymond's reports.
13. ↑ The Papers of John Marshall, eds. Herbert A. Johnson, Charles T. Cullen, and Nancy G. Harris (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, in association with the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1974), 1:44.
14. ↑ Gilbert Chinard, ed., The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson: A Repertory of His Ideas on Government (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1926), 75.
15. ↑ George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery, with Remarks upon Decrees by the Court of Appeals, Reversing Some of Those Decisions, 2nd ed., ed. B.B. Minor (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1852), 302.