Sir William Blackstone was an English jurist, justice and Tory politician most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England which became the best-known description of the doctrines of English law.
29 Facts About William Blackstone
2.
William Blackstone is considered responsible for completing the Codrington Library and Warton Building, and simplifying the complex accounting system used by the college.
3.
Legal education in England had stalled; William Blackstone's work gave the law "at least a veneer of scholarly respectability".
4.
William Blackstone was the fourth and posthumous son of Charles William Blackstone, a silk mercer from Cheapside, the son of a wealthy apothecary.
5.
William Blackstone became firm friends with Thomas Bigg, a surgeon and the son of Lovelace Bigg, a gentleman from Wiltshire.
6.
Tax records show Charles William Blackstone to have been the second most prosperous man in the parish in 1722, and death registers show that the family had several servants.
7.
William Blackstone was sent to Charterhouse School in 1730 having been nominated by Charles Wither, a relative of Mary Blackstone.
8.
William Blackstone did well there, and became head of the school by age 15.
9.
William Blackstone revelled in Charterhouse's academic curriculum, particularly the Latin poetry of Ovid and Virgil.
10.
William Blackstone began to attract note as a poet at school, writing a 30-line set of rhyming couplets to celebrate the wedding of James Hotchkis, the headmaster.
11.
William Blackstone won a silver medal for his Latin verses on John Milton, gave the annual Latin oration in 1738, and was noted as having been the favourite student of his masters.
12.
Blackstone was particularly good at Greek, mathematics and poetry, with his notes on William Shakespeare being included in George Steevens' 1781 edition of Shakespeare's plays.
13.
At the time there was no proper legal education system, and William Blackstone read Coke on Littleton, the works of Henry Finch, and related legal tracts.
14.
William Blackstone's call to the Bar saw Blackstone begin to alternate between Oxford and London, occupying chambers in Pump Court but living at All Souls College.
15.
William Blackstone regularly acted as a law reporter; his personal notes on cases start with Hankey v Trotman.
16.
Records show a "perfectionist zeal" in organising the estates and finances of All Souls, and William Blackstone was noted for massively simplifying the complex accounting system used by the college.
17.
In 1750 William Blackstone completed his first legal tract, An Essay on Collateral Consanguinity, which dealt with those claiming a familial tie to the founder or All Souls in an attempt to gain preeminence in elections.
18.
The Regius Professorship of Civil Law had become vacant in 1753; despite support from Lord Mansfield, William Blackstone had been rejected in favour of Robert Jenner, widely considered William Blackstone's lesser intellectually but a far greater political mind.
19.
William Blackstone wrote a manual on the Court's practice, and through his position gained a large number of contacts and connections, as well as visibility, which aided his legal career significantly.
20.
In 1756 William Blackstone published the first of his full legal texts, the 200 page An Analysis of the Laws of England.
21.
William Blackstone's chosen career did lend him to politics, in that the lawyers in the House of Commons were often added to select committees to provide them with technical expertise in drafting legislation.
22.
In 1765 William Blackstone announced his resignation from the Vinerian Chair, effective after his 1766 lectures.
23.
At this point William Blackstone had published nothing new since A Treatise on the Law of Descents in Fee Simple in 1759.
24.
William Blackstone's treatise was republished in 1770,1773,1774,1775,1778 and in a posthumous edition in 1783.
25.
William Blackstone sat regularly as a judge, despite bouts of ill health, and served on various circuit courts.
26.
William Blackstone was considered a poor trial judge, being reversed on appeal more frequently than any of his peers.
27.
William Blackstone had drawn up a plan for a dedicated School of Law, and submitted it to the University of Oxford; when the idea was rejected he included it in the Commentaries.
28.
The bronze statue is a nine-foot standing portrait of William Blackstone wearing judicial robes and a long curly wig, holding a copy of Commentaries.
29.
William Blackstone's Ratio is a maxim of English law, having been established as such within a few decades of William Blackstone's work being published.