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Maximes of Reason, or, The Reason of the Common Law of England

by Edmund Wingate

Maximes of Reason
Title page from Maximes of Reason, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary.
Author	Edmund Wingate
Editor	{{{editor}}}
Translator	{{{trans}}}
Published	London: Printed by R. & W. L. for W. Lee, A. Crook, D. Pakeman, H. Twiford, G. Bedell, T. Dring, J. Place
Date	1658
Edition	First
Language	English
Volumes	{{{set}}} volume set
Pages	[16], 772, (i. e. 720), [12]
Desc.	(29 cm.)
Location	[[Shelf {{{shelf}}}]]
	[[Shelf {{{shelf2}}}]]

Edmund Wingate was baptized on June 11, 1596 at Flamborough in Yorkshire. He wrote very popular arithmetic and important works about mathematics, such as The Use of the Rule of Proportion. Later in life, he began to study the law and wrote several books in this field including Maximes of Reason.^[1]

In Maximes of Reason or, The Reason of the Common Law of England, Wingate compiles and comments on 214 legal maxims.^[2] At the time, Wingate had a legal theory which stated:

Not all Laws that are Just and Prudent ought to be used as Radii and Effluxes from the Eternal Wisdom, having thus Exemplar Cause and bright Idea in God himself. The mediate Author of these is humane Reason, exalted and purified by Learning and Experience, and enlightened by the Divine Spirit; I presume there is no fear of Sofinians in Law, and that attempts may be made without charges, to discover how the vast multitude of Cases, that Follies, or Passions, or Necessities of men have obliged us to be acquainted with, are all accountable and redouble to some few Theses; which being prime Emanations and General Maximes of Reason, govern and serve for a Clue and Conduct, through the Labyrinth of that perplex variety; Saving us the labour of Chargeing our memories with every particle, then to burden and confound us.^[3]

Maximes of Reason was in use throughout the colonies and was in libraries of lawyers such as James Alexander, Joseph Murray, and William Smith.^[4] The ideas in it, and in other similar books, helped the laws of the colonies develop such as the “principle of the right against self-incrimination” which was recognized by the colonial bench and bar of New York.^[5]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Wingate's Maxims, fol. and given by Thomas Jefferson to Dabney Carr. The 1658 edition appears to be the only edition published.^[6] Accordingly, both the Brown Bibliography^[7] and George Wythe's Library^[8] on LibraryThing include the 1658 edition. The Wolf Law Library moved a copy of the same edition from another rare book collection to the George Wythe Collection.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Recently rebound in period style. Spine features four bands with gilt rules with green label. Purchased through the generosity of Daniel W. Baran and Lena Stratton Baran, Class of 1936.

View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.

References

1. ↑ Bertha Porter, "Wingate, Edmund (bap. 1596, d. 1656)", rev. H. K. Higton in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004- ), accessed 12 Oct 2013.
2. ↑ Roscoe Pound, "The Maxims of Equity. I of Maxims Generally," Harvard Law Review, 34, no. 8 (1921): 834.
3. ↑ A.W.B. Simpson, "The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise: Legal Principles and the Forms of Legal Literature,“ The University of Chicago Law Review, 48, no. 3 (1981): 646.
4. ↑ Leonard W. Levy, and Lawrence H. Leder, ""Exotic Fruit": The Right Against Compulsory Self-Incrimination in Colonial New York," The William and Mary Quarterly, 20, no. 1 (1963): 15.
5. ↑ Ibid.
6. ↑ J. G. Marvin, Legal Bibliography or a Thesaurus of American, English, Irish, and Scotch Law Books (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, Law Booksellers, 1847), 741.
7. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433
8. ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on September 16, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe

External Links

Read this book in Google Books.