Commonplace Books of Law: A Selection of Law-Related Notebooks from the Seventeenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century
PAUL PRUITT, University of Alabama – School of Law
DAVID DURHAM, University of Alabama – School of Law
This collection of legal notebooks can be downloaded in full as a PDF. My attention was attracted by the Bounds Seventeenth-Century Legal Notebook, by several writers,
…in many ways a mysterious compilation. Beginning with a page of household memoranda and recipes, written in two different hands,1 it continues with ten pages of notes of trials or moot courts, written in a distinct, informal hand.2
Extract (there are footnotes explaining the terms):
Tender & Refusall
[T]he laste pipen of huney made forty 7 pound. The pipen made ii [11] pounde and a halef so theri was but thity 5 pound and a halfe of the huney.… For the Gout
Put three Good heads of Garlick in to a Quart of Brandy & when the Gout attacks the Stomack, drink four or five Spoonfull.…Hill. Terme. 36. Car 2d.
Jan: 23. 1684.
Jury A Returne of Jurys without Sheriffs.
Parish ought to maintaine ye high-way, Els[e] Indictable.
e8 ye Parishoners may have theire action agst. any one yt9
ought to repaire y[t] particularly.
Indictmt. quashed for not saying (what yeare ye session
was on)
Can: Law. H.8.10 Conserning Cannon Law.
Prohib:11 not granted for (lying incontinently with
another mans wife) because ye Ecle Crt hase conusance12
of it.
(The other documents are all from the USA)
Via Legal History Blog (thanks to Isabella of the much-missed Taccuino di Traduzione for the tip some time ago)