Reports in the Court of Kings Bench at Westminster
by Joseph Keble
Joseph Keble (1632–1710) entered Gray's Inn in 1647 and became a member of the bar in 1653.[1] He never practiced law but attended the Court of King's Bench from 1661 onwards, taking notes of the cases he witnessed. Opinions regarding the quality of his reports are uniformly negative.[2] Holdsworth explains "The main defect of Keble's reports is that he merely jotted town what he heard from day to day in court, without attempting to collect into a single narrative the history of any one case. Hence it is necessary to look into several places for cases which extend over several days."[3] Nevertheless, some historians have found value in the role Keble played as a mere "register", noting that "Keble's Reports help, often, to explain difficulties in contemporary Reports of better credit ..."[4]
Bibliographic Information
Author: Joseph Keble.
Title: Reports in the Court of Kings Bench at Westminster, from the XII to the XXX Year of the Reign of our Late Sovereign Lord King Charles II.
Publication Info: London: Printed by W. Rawlins, S Roycroft and M. Flesher, assigns of Richard and Edward Atkins for Thomas Dring, Charles Harper, Samuel Keble, and William Freeman, 1685.
Edition: First edition.
Extent: Three volumes.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
References
- ↑ Stuart Handley, "Keble, Joseph (1632–1710)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 7 Sept 2013. (Subscription required for access.) Subsequent bibliographic facts also taken from this article.
- ↑ John William Wallace, The Reporters, Arranged and Characterized with Incidental Remarks, 4th ed., rev. and enl., (Boston: Soule and Bugbee, 1882), 315. Wallace writes that one justice "burned his copy, thinking it not worth while to lumber his library with trash."
- ↑ William Holdsworth, A History of English Law, (London: Methuen & Co., Sweet and Maxwell, 1924), 6:557-558.
- ↑ Wallace, The Reporters, 317.
