Reports of Special Cases Argued and Decreed in the Court of Chancery

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by William Nelson

William Nelson (b. 1652/3) was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1673 and was called the bar in 1684.[1] "A successful practitioner in the court of chancery, Nelson's numerous literary works displayed considerable legal learning, but despite his low opinion of the writings of others, Nelson's own works were not invariably accurate or useful."[2] He published Reports of Special Cases in the Court of Chancery in 1717 which he "claimed to be largely transcribed from the manuscript of a late attorney-general, and to contain reports most of which had never previously been printed or of points which had not previously been noticed, though several of the reports had already appeared in print elsewhere."[3]

Bibliographic Information

Author: William Nelson.

Title: Reports of Special Cases Argued and Decreed in the Court of Chancery, in the Reigns of King Charles I., King Charles II. and King William III.

Publication Info: London, In the Savoy: Printed by Eliz. Nutt, and R. Gosling (assignees of E. Sayer) for B. Lintott, 1717.

Edition: First edition.

Extent: 230 pages.

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Nelson's Chancery reports 8[vo.] and given by Thomas Jefferson to Dabney Carr. According to Soule, the first edition was the only edition available in Wythe's lifetime.[4] Accordingly, both the Brown Bibliography[5] and George Wythe's Library[6] on LibraryThing list the 1717 (first) edition.

Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy

Rebound in tan buckram with autographs on the titlepage of "Bordley" and "R.W. Hughes."

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

References

  1. N. G. Jones, "Nelson, William (b. 1652/3)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 27 June 2013. (Subscription required for access.)
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid. See also John William Wallace, The Reporters, Arranged and Characterized with Incidental Remarks, 4th ed., rev. and enl., (Boston: Soule and Bugbee, 1882), 480.
  4. Charles C. Soule, The Lawyer's Reference Manual of Law Books and Citations (Boston: Soule and Bugbee, 1833), 77n6. The second edition was published in 1872.
  5. Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file.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
  6. LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on April 21, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe