Robert Paynell's King's Bench Reports (1625-1627)
Abstract
The reports of cases from the Court of King's Bench from the first two years of the reign of Charles I that have found their way into print are not necessarily the best, although they are now, of course, the ones that are the most familiar. As will be discussed, many of the attributions of authorship are dubious or false. However, the anonymity to the present generation of lawyers and judges should not by itself detract from their validity. This is because the preservation and printing of law reports in the seventeenth century was quite haphazard, being undertaken more often than not by printers acting without any help or advice from lawyers. Modern editions of the law reports of this period, 1625 to 1627, will shed much light on the obscurity of the sources of this period of legal history. The following discussion centers on the individual sets of King's Bench law reports from this time.