A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown
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 Hawkins also produced a new edition of the Statutes at Large in 1734–35, which was soon superseded by the edition of John Cay and Owen Ruffhead.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.
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: First edition, volume one; second edition, volume two; two volumes.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Hawkin's P. C. fol. and given by Thomas Jefferson to Dabney Carr. We do not know which edition Wythe owned. The Brown Bibliography[2] includes the first edition while George Wythe's Library[3] on LibraryThing indicates "Precise edition unknown. Folio editions (in two volumes) were published at London in 1716-21, 1724, 1739 and 1762."
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
View volume one and volume two of this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
External Links
References
- ↑ 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. (Subscription required for access.)
- ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file.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
- ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on September 16, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe
