Granville Sharp, Early Champion of Abolitionism

Magna Charta cum statutis (London: Richard
Tottell, 1556)

One of the Law Library's most prized copies of Magna Carta was once owned by Granville Sharp (1735-1813), a founder of the abolitionist movement. At the top of the title page of one of our 16th-century Magna Cartas can be seen "Ex libris, Granville Sharp, 1760." Apparently acquired by Sharp when he was twenty-five, the volume may have had an important influence on him. Largely an autodidact, Sharp taught himself Hebrew and Greek and joined in learned theological disputes with Oxford dons. He is still known today for "Sharp's Rule," a principle of Biblical translation. He also developed a considerable knowledge of English law despite never training as an attorney.

Sharp's involvement with abolitionism developed through his brother, a physician, who treated the slave Jonathan Strong in London after he had been badly abused. Sharp sought the man's release in court, and later published the first significant anti-slavery tract in England, A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery (1769). He was also a motive force behind the famous Somersett case (1772), in which Chief Justice Mansfield ruled that James Somersett could not be sent back into colonial slavery from English soil. In the same period, Sharp corresponded with American abolitionists, including Anthony Benezet, and stirred a young movement. Sharp's keen and well-researched interest in the legal dimensions of English liberty—which may trace to his reading of our copy of Magna Carta—established part of his commitment to freedom and human rights.  

Sharp's underlining at clause 29 of
Magna Carta.

Sharp underlined and annotated his copy of Magna Carta at important passages. Notably he underlined Magna Carta's famous clause 29 (from the 1225 Magna Carta), which we take as a basis of due process: "No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseized of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice." Sharp considered these key provisions of Magna Carta as natural and inalienable rights.

Sharp eventually authored more than sixty works on topics ranging from anti-slavery, the divinity of Christ, and even the right of the American colonists to take part in the English legislature, the latter another issue linked to rights set out in Magna Carta.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

Henry Care in England and America

Henry Care, English Liberties (Providence, 1774)

Our current exhibit, “Magna Carta, 800 Years: Rights and the Rule of Law,” features eight editions of Magna Carta printed before 1600. Only one other exhibit title is represented by multiple copies: Henry Care’s English Liberties, or The Free-Born Subject’s Inheritance. Originally published in England in 1680, English Liberties was first printed in Boston in 1721 by James Franklin (Ben’s older brother). The Library owns five copies of Care’s title, three printed in London in 1680, 1682, and 1719, and two printed in Boston and Providence, in 1721 and 1774, respectively.

Although Henry Care (1646-88) intended his work for the English public, English Liberties was very popular in North America. Care compiled Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, the Habeas Corpus Act, and other statutes that addressed royal abuses of power, and the pamphlet was widely distributed in the colonies. It is credited with playing an important role in advancing the cause for the American Revolution through its accessible message about English law, government, liberties, and juries.

Among the library’s copies of Care’s English Liberties, one copy is notable for its printing date and an interesting scrap of a newspaper that can be found inside.  Our 1774 copy of the book, printed by John Carter shortly after the Boston Tea Party, is significant for its appearance and influence at a key moment in American history.  The clipping, on the other hand, is part of a 19th-century editorial that opposes General Winfield Scott Hancock’s 1880 presidential candidacy, due to his actions during Reconstruction. Appointed by President Andrew Johnson, Hancock replaced General Sheridan, a sympathizer with the North, and was charged to oversee the Fifth Military District in 1867.  Hancock (1824-1886) was responsible for writing General Order No. 40, which restored the right to trial by jury, habeas corpus, liberty of the press, freedom of speech, civil liberties, and rights of property.  Critics pointed out, however, that Hancock also empowered the vanquished southern Democrats to take up old positions of power.   

   - Barbara Berdahl, Assistant Special Collections Librarian 

Magna Carta Across the Atlantic

Portrait of John Wilkes by Hogarth (1763)

In the Riesenfeld Center's current exhibit, "Magna Carta, 800 Years: Rights and the Rule of Law," several items highlight the political dialogue between England and the American colonies on the eve of revolution. Colonists sought to assert what they saw as their essential English rights against an overreaching British government, and those asserted rights expanded in the 18th century. Some had early origins - the colonial slogan "No taxation without representation," referred to a principle of consent to taxation that traced back to Magna Carta. That argument found some favor in England, just as opposition to broad search warrants, and support for free political speech and expanded religious freedom, echoed across the Atlantic in sympathetic circles.

Political radical and nonconformist John Wilkes (1725-97), was one English figure who became a symbol of rights and liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. Starting as an incendiary journalist, Wilkes went on to a political career that saw him successively expelled from the Commons, exiled from England and imprisoned. As a savvy and ambitious politician, Wilkes took up the discourse of liberty and rights as adeptly as anyone in the period. During his career he resisted broad arrest warrants - also a colonial grievance - and defended his own privilege as a member of Parliament against arrest for libel. Partly in response to his enemies, he also supported the publication of direct reports of Parliamentary debates, and the cause of freer speech eventually won out. At his height and after, the popular slogan "Wilkes, Liberty and No. 45!" captured Wilkes's deep appeal as an opposition figure.

In America, Wilkes was popular prior to the war and had support from the likes of John Adams, John Hancock and James Otis. William Hogarth's satirical portrait of Wilkes, depicting him as a devilish figure holding a tall pole with a cap on top, has become his iconic image. The objects in his hand are the liberty pole and Phrygian cap, symbols of freedom that were likewise used in the colonies in opposition to British rule. One of our current exhibit books, Magna Carta, Opposed to Assumed Privilege… (1771), shows these symbols stamped on its spine, and it is no coincidence. The book treats the controversy over printing Parliamentary debates, and Wilkes's role in it. Invoking Magna Carta in the book's title was a first calculated appeal, to which the elegant blue morocco binding, with liberty poles and caps, added another recognizable sign for those in the know.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

Magna Charta, Opposed to Assumed Privilege (London, 1771)

 

Library Celebration, April 29th - Last Day of Classes and Law Day!

What could be better than the last day of classes?  Or celebrating Law Day two days early?  How about cake, cookies, chips and drinks into the bargain?

Come celebrate the last day of classes next Wednesday, April 29th, from 12 - 2pm in the library lobby.  Enjoy good food and good company, and take a deserved break before finals.

Law Day and Last Day of Classes Celebration

April 29th, 12 - 2pm
Law Library Lobby

You've worked hard all year.  It's not too early to come celebrate!

(Law Day is also coming early, but it's another good chance to celebrate Magna Carta and all things constitutional!)

Magna Carta and the Historians

Fleta; seu commentarius juris Anglicani
(London, 1647).

One of the notable books in the Riesenfeld Center’s current exhibit, “Magna Carta, 800 Years: Rights and the Rule of Law,” is a medieval treatise on English law known as Fleta. Our copy is of the first printed edition (1647), edited by famous English scholar, historian, lawyer and polymath John Selden (1584-1654). Although not a direct commentary on Magna Carta, Fleta offers insight into English law during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), under whom Magna Carta was enrolled as statutory law in 1297. The treatise borrows from and abridges a slightly earlier treatise on English law, Bracton's De legibus, though Fleta was much less well known. In fact, Selden’s edition was based on a single complete medieval manuscript of Fleta, held today at the British Library.

The few medieval treatises on English law were valuable to historians and constitutionally-minded lawyers in the early modern period, and Fleta was no exception. Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the great lawyer who championed English common law and its medieval heritage as the enduring source of English liberties, cited Fleta as a venerable authority. Like Bracton’s De legibus, Fleta was taken by Coke and associates as a witness to the antiquity and essential continuity of English laws and courts, and to some of their development. In his Institutes of the Laws of England (1642), Coke invoked Fleta repeatedly to explain and lend support to the guarantees found in Magna Carta. Coke’s interpretation of Magna Carta, in turn, guided the early modern reception of the text and helped resurrect the message of individual rights and limited government that it still carries today.

Like Coke, Selden made use of Fleta in its major surviving manuscript (known as BL, Cotton MS Julius B.viii). Its owner, Robert Cotton (1571-1631), amassed the greatest private collection of medieval manuscripts to his time in England. This included two of the four existing manuscript copies of the 1215 Magna Carta (today also at the British Library). Cotton then made his collection freely available to Selden and other scholars, and there were important political overtones to their antiquarian activity. Figures like Coke and Selden were seen to use Cotton's library to support the rights of Parliament, in opposition to royalist arguments favoring the broad prerogative of the king. Royalist fears were not unfounded, and it was not long after Coke, Selden and others forced Charles I to sign the Petition of Right (1628) - a landmark English constitutional document - that Charles successfully closed, and then confiscated Cotton's library in 1630. Cotton died a year later, upon which the collection was restored to his heirs. Certainly, libraries and their scholars had a key role to play in early modern historical and political debate over English law and government.     

Our copy of Selden's Fleta was once owned by an associate of Selden, antiquarian and MP Sir Roger Twysden (1597-1672). As a law-minded conservative, Twysden was critical of royal prerogative and defended English rights and laws, though he was also fined and imprisoned as a royalist during the Civil War. Twysden's annotations to the text show that he, too, consulted the manuscript, and attempted to correct Selden in a number of places. His emendations do not much change the substance of the passages, but they suggest Twysden's meticulous comparison of manuscript against printed text. It is not a skill as useful in our age of infinite texts, but it was at a time when single text and sacred text were closely linked, and the stakes of historical interpretation were high. 

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

New Tumblr Posts!

Portrait of Queen Caroline, from Lord Brougham
Considered as a Lawyer (Boston, 1868).

Before we continue with highlights from our Magna Carta exhibit and other collection items related to it, check out some of the great items over on our Tumblr site. As another way to show off collection items, and to leave a quick, easily browsable visual record, the Tumblr site has proved a great complement to the blog - and to our collection - since its start in early October.  Kudos to Barbara Berdahl for the great work!

Some quick highlights: letters and photos from our outstanding Clarence Darrow Archive, the London Times obituary of Winston Churchill from January 25, 1965 (thanks to Professor David Weissbrodt for this item!), and images from our extensive trial collection (including the trial of Charles I, Major John Andre, spy and accomplice of Benedict Arnold, and the successful insanity defense of Jonathan Martin).  Others range from a fascinating example of an extra-illustrated biography of Henry Brougham, a copy of one of our Magna Carta exhibit items with an interesting 19th-c. newspaper clipping, a New York State Constitution showing William Seward's seat in the NY Senate, and neat items related to suffrage.  Come follow us on Tumblr as well!  

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

Our Magna Cartas: Early Printed Editions

At the center of our new exhibit, "Magna Carta, 800 Years: Rights and the Rule of Law," stands the Riesenfeld Center's collection of early printed editions of Magna Carta. The Law Library owns a remarkable fourteen editions of the "Great Charter" printed before 1600, and eight are in the exhibit. These include a copy of Magna Carta owned by important English abolitionist Granville Sharp, and a copy printed by Elizabeth Pickering, the first woman to print books in England.  

The boke of Magna Carta with diuers other statutes...
London: Robert Redman, 1534.

Magna Carta was among the first law books printed in England, though it was not the first. That distinction goes to the Abbreviamentum statutorum, printed by Machlinia and Lettou around 1481. Several other English law books saw print before Magna Carta, but the "Great Charter," as fundamental English statutory law, did not remain in manuscript long into the 16th century. It was first printed in 1508 by Richard Pynson, while the Library’s collection begins with the second, Pynson's edition of 1514. Pynson was prolific: he had relocated to London from Rouen, and enjoyed a period of preeminence as a printer of English law, eventually producing 139 editions. The Magna Carta collection at the Library likewise includes editions by the printers Petyt and Berthelet, as well as copies by noted printers Robert Redman (husband of Elizabeth Pickering) and John Rastell. Both of the latter competed with Pynson as leading English law printers of the earlier 16th century before the emergence of Richard Tottell. All of our early editions of Magna Carta are printed in small formats, for use by students and practitioners as ready reference to valid law.

The Library's Magna Carta collection was assembled by Arthur C. Pulling, the noted law librarian after whom the rare books collection is named. Between 1912 and his departure in the early 1940s, Pulling acquired the core of the current rare collection, with a particular focus on English and early American law. He followed several bibliographies in his rare book collecting - notably Joseph Beale's Bibliography of Early English Law Books (1926) - and sent extensive "want" lists to booksellers near and far. His well-used and annotated copy of Beale, showing the acquisition of what may amount to half the titles listed, is still on our shelves. Without question, the scope of Pulling's acquisitions was impressive and historically important, and it made Minnesota's rare law collection one of the nation's strongest.

Pulling's meticulous work resulted in a series of Magna Cartas that are unique, and that shed light on the early history of the document as printed text. First published in Latin, Magna Carta was translated into English by the interesting George Ferrers in the 1530s and printed in English several times before 1550, including Elizabeth Pickering's edition of 1540-41, and the beautiful black-and-red 1539 edition, also in the collection. A number of our copies bear early and multiple ownership marks and annotations; some have what could be called 'scratch writing,' and even designs. In one, the royal English coat of arms is incompletely traced on blank leaves, while another shows a wolf-like creature drawn on the rear cover. All of these may bear witness to the books' frequent use by students and frequent change of hands after first reaching the market. Although the students who first owned them are long gone, the volumes are fascinating and hold research possibilities for students today.

   - Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections

Magna Carta. London: Richard Pynson, 1514.  Tracing the watermark.