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; 3 volumes.
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Both Dean's Memo[5] and the Brown Bibliography[6] suggest Wythe owned this title based on notes in John Marshall's commonplace book.[7] Both list the first (1685) edition.
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.
- ↑ Memorandum from Barbara C. Dean, Colonial Williamsburg Found., to Mrs. Stiverson, Colonial Williamsburg Found. (June 16, 1975), 12 (on file at Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary).
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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), 1:41.
