[1] R. C. Colmery, A Memoir of the Life and Character of Josiah Scott (Columbus, Ohio, 1881), p. 15, cited Anne Fidler, ‘The Life and Labours of Antebellum Law Students’, in Lawyers and Vampires: Cultural Histories of Legal Professions, ed. W. Wesley Pue and David Sugarman (Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2003), p. 91.
[2] W. E. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, 17 vols. (London, 1903-72), xii. 707.
[3] The Sovereignty of the Law, ed. G. Jones (London, 1973), p. xxi, quoting J. Prior, Life of Edmund Malone (London, 1860), pp. 431-2.
[4] H. G. Hanbury, ‘Blackstone as a Judge’, American Journal of Legal History, 3. 1 (1959), 1-27.
[5] Ian Doolittle, William Blackstone: A Biography (Haslemere, Surrey, 2001), pp. 87-88.
[6] D. F. Lemmings, Professors of the Law: Barristers and English Legal Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2000), ch. 7; see also his ‘The Independence of the Judiciary in the Eighteenth Century’, in The Life of the Law, ed. P. Birks (London, 1993), pp. 125-49.
[7] Commentaries, i.259-60.
[8] Reports of Cases ... by... William Blackstone... with a Preface containing Memoirs of his Life, ed. J. Clitherow (London, 1781), vol. I, p. xiv (hereafter Clitherow, Memoirs).
[9] All citations of Blackstone’s letters here and below refer to my forthcoming edition of The Correspondence of Sir William Blackstone, now in press with the Selden Society for publication in 2005; letter 58, Blackstone to Fitzmaurice, 11 March 1761.
[10] Fletcher Norton (1716-89); his patent of appointment was enrolled on 25 January 1762: J. C. Sainty, A List of English Law Officers, King’s Counsel and Holders of Patents of Precedence (Selden Society Supplemetary Series, vol. 7, 1986), p. 65.
[11] William Noel (1695-1762): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. C. Mathews and B. Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004); hence ODNB.
[12] Letter 71, Blackstone to Shelburne, 27 December 1761.
[13] Sir Robert Henley, like Blackstone a quondam fellow of All Souls College, Oxford: ODNB.
[14] Letter 74, Blackstone to Shelburne, 29 July 1762.
[15] Sainty, Judges, p. 81: William Noel died on 8 December 1762.
[16] William Bertie Blackstone was baptised on 5 September 1762 at St Mary le More, Wallingford.
[17] Sir Michael Foster (1689-1763), had served as justice of King’s Bench since 1745: ODNB.
[18] i.e. George Perrot, who would be appointed a baron of the Exchequer on 24 January 1763: Sainty, Judges, p. 130.
[19] Letter 82, Blackstone to Shelburne, 12 December 1762.
[20] Henry Howard, 12th earl of Suffolk (1739-1779), who entered Magdalen College, Oxford from Eton in 1757, and following the usual accelerated academic career of the peerage, graduated DCL in 1761: ODNB.
[21] In April 1765 a rumour circulated that Blackstone was about to be raised to the bench on condition that he helped Sir Robert Chambers become his successor as Vinerian Professor: GERARD HAMILTON ref?
[22] i.e. Robert Henley, 1st earl of Northington, president of the council 1766-7: ODNB.
[23] Blackstone’s mentor, Sir John Eardley Wilmot (1709-1792), was raised from a puisne judgeship in King’s Bench to the chief justiceship of Common Pleas on 20 August 1766: ODNB and Sainty, Judges, p. 51.
[24] Charles Pratt, 1st lord Camden, appointed chancellor 30 July 1766: DNB.
[25] Letter 100, 9 October 1766.
[26] Sainty, Judges, pp. 37, 81.
[27] There is no direct evidence that Blackstone’s move to Common Pleas following the death of Sir William Yates in June 1770 was motivated by friction between himself and Chief Justice Mansfield. The main positive attraction was presumably a less demanding workload than in King’s Bench, where Blackstone had agreed to take Yates’s place ‘only on account of poor Yates’s Representation of his infirm State of Health’: cf. Letter 128, William Blackstone to Sir John Eardley Wilmot, 8 June 1770 and Lemmings, Professors of the Law, p. 286.
[28] The Diary of John Baker, ed. P. C. Yorke (London, 1931), p. 320.
[29] Daniel Duman, The Judicial Bench in England 1727-1875 (London, 1982), p. 73.
[30] Sainty, Judges,, p. 58, n. 10; this appears to have been a posthumous arrangement, paid to his widow: cf. PRO C 66/3725, 10 June 1772.
[31] Camden was succeeded on 17 January 1770 by Charles Yorke, who died three days later; the seal then remained in commission until the appointment of Henry Bathurst, Lord Apsley on 23 January 1771: Handbook of British Chron ology, ed. E.B. Fryde, D.E. Greeway, S. Porter and I. Roy, 3rd edn., (London, 1986), pp. 90-91.
[32] Clitherow, Memoirs, p. xx.
[33] Ibid., p. xxiv.
[34] Ibid., p. xxvii.
[35] Doolittle, William Blackstone, p. 87.
[36] Letter 125, Blackstone to [James Morrell?], 12 February 1770.
[37] Letter 131, Blackstone to William Eden, 25 August 1774.
[38] Letter 142, Blackstone to William Strahan, 11 January 1778.
[39] See above, letter 74, Blackstone to Shelburne, 29 July 1762.
[40] The phrase comes from Clitherow’s ‘Memoirs’, p. xviii.
[41] That the barrister whom Blackstone reportedly ‘frequently interrupted in the course of his pleading, in a very uncivil manner’, was Matthew Skinner of Lincoln’s Inn, whose father Sir Matthew had been recorder of Oxford, 1721-49, may point to some longstanding personal animus: St Johns College, Oxford, Munim LXXXVI.D.8: ‘The Diary of the Reverend Thomas Fry’, transcribed W. N. Hargreaves-Mawsley , pp. 65, 119; The History of the University of Oxford: Volume V: the Eighteenth Century, ed. L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford, 1986), p. 101n.
[42] Clitherow, Memoirs, p. xxviii.
[43] Prior, Life of Malone, p. 431.
[44] Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650-1850 (Oxford, 2000), p. 158.
[45] Commentaries, i.258.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Letter 145, William Blackstone to William Eden, 4 March 1778.
[48] Presumably the suggestion that government delays in implementing the proposed wage rise were due to Blackstone having suggested ‘the Propriety of extending the Plan a little farther’.
[49] Letter 149, Blackstone to Eden, 21 March 1778.
[50] Letter 151, Blackstone to Eden, 22 March 1778.
[51] Letter 151, Blackstone to Popham, 19 April 1778.
[52] Letter 160, Blackstone to William Eden, 28 February 1779.
[53] Letter 165, Blackstone to Sir Roger Newdigate, 1 May 1779. He had earlier written three letters on 25 February 1779 canvassing support in the House from the MPs Eden, Newdigate and William Strahan.
[54] The Letters of Edward Gibbon, ed. J. E. Norton (London, 1956), iii. 170.
[55] Clitherow, Memoirs, p. xvi; cf. the somewhat amused account of his unsociable behaviour as guest in an aristocratic household: Elizabeth Harris to James Harris, 22 July 1771: Hampshire Record Office, 9M73/G1258/33 (I owe this reference to the kindness of Rosemary Dunhill).
[56] J. Debrett, Parliamentary Debates (1794), iii.455.