Selden Dues Notice

June, 2009

Dear Member,

Once again it is time for us to request payment of your annual dues. The dues for 2009 remain $65.00 for individuals and $90.00 for institutions. Your prompt payment will be very much appreciated. If you are paying with a check that does not contain your name, could you please write your name on it or include your name on a separate piece of paper within the envelope? (Institutions should include a copy of the invoice form.) This will save us much time here. It also seems to help to prevent checks from going astray if you use the full mailing address: Selden Society, c/o Prof. Charles Donahue, Harvard Law School, 1575 Massachuesetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. The volume for 2008 (vol. 125), Dr. Andrew Lyall’s edition of Irish Exchequer Reports: Cases Argued and Determined in the Courts of Exchequer and Chancery in Ireland, 1716–34, has been delayed in the press. It is scheduled to be issued later in the summer and will be sent all members whom we have recorded as having paid their 2008 dues. The volume for 2009 (vol. 126), for which you are now paying your dues, will be Professor David Millon’s Select Ecclesiastical Cases from the King’s Courts, 1272–1307. This volume has been advanced in the queue because it was closer to being ready for publication than any of the others. It is a collection of cases, mostly culled from the plea rolls of the two benches, designed to show how the king’s courts delimited the scope of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the age of Circumspecte agatis. It will also include a reassessment of the effect of that writ, derived from a study of the Norfolk eyre of 1286; and selections from the eyre rolls will be included. While every effort will be made to produce the volume this calendar year, it is likely that it will not appear until next year. Professor R. H. Helmholz’s English Ecclesiastical Reports, 1550–1650 is likely to be the volume for 2010. Other imminent volumes in the main series are Mr. Nicholas le Poidevin’s edition of the reports of John Bryt (a named Year Book reporter of the early fifteenth century), Professor Phillipp Schofield’s edition of a selection of personal actions in manorial courts (c. 1250 to c. 1350), and Professor Margaret McGlynn’s collection of readings on the liberties of the church, including that of Edward Hall. Further along in the pipeline are a proposed edition of William Staunford’s Plees del Coron (1557) and an edition of the papers of Sir Matthew Hale’s law reform commission of the 1550’s. Volume 15 in the Supplementary Series, the Catalogue of the Legal Manuscripts of Anthony Taussig, compiled by the Literary Director and Mr. Taussig, appeared in 2007. The Taussig manuscripts form the most important collection of English legal manuscripts still in private hands. The contents range from the only known privately-held manuscript of Bracton to important collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century legal correspondence. There are fifty illustrations, providing legible specimens of many different kinds of legal manuscripts and legal hands. Supplementary Series volumes are not included in your membership dues. The volume is available to members at a concessional rate of $70.00, post free if payment accompanies your order. Once more, we will handle U.S. dollar orders from this office. Selden Dues Notice June, 2009 page 2 Other volumes in the pipeline of the Supplementary Series include the Literary Director’s Legal Manuscripts Formerly in the Collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., and Dr. David Crook’s The King’s Bench and Common Bench in the Reign of Henry III. The main series of Selden volumes is entirely in print. Volumes 1–99 have been reprinted by W. S. Hein & Co., Inc., 1285 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14209–1987 (phone: [800]828–7571; FAX: [716]883–8100; email: [email protected]; website: http://www.wshein.com/). The cost is $95 per volume, with a twenty percent discount for Selden members, plus dispatch costs. Volume 100 and forward can, as before, be obtained from the Secretary, Victor Tunkel, Selden Society, Faculty of Laws, Queen Mary and Westfield College, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, U.K. (phone: 44 20 7882 5136; FAX: 44 20 8981 8733; email: [email protected]). Hein has also recently placed “on-line” the first 117 volumes of the main series (through 2000), the first 13 volumes of the Supplementary Series (also through 2000), the Centenary Guide, the Statutes of the Realm, the English Reports—Full Reprint, and a selected collection of treatises. The collection is available to libraries and individuals on a subscription basis. Individual members of the Society in good standing may access the Society’s publications free of charge. Details about how to accomplish this will be placed on the Society’s website later in the summer. In 2004, Hein, with the Society’s permission, issued a volume reproducing the whole of the Society’s lecture series from 1952–2001. The volume is offered to members at a special price of $120 inclusive of all dispatch costs. Hein has also reprinted the four volumes of Professor Thorne’s edition of Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England. The price is $395, with a discount to Selden members of twenty percent, plus dispatch costs. Simultaneously, the Ames Foundation, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell Law School have produced a fully-searchable “on-line” version of both the Latin and the English text of Bracton. It is available on the “world-wide web” at: http://hlsl.law.harvard.edu/bracton/. The Ames Foundation, which, as many Selden members know, is an organization similar to Selden, though its publications are more irregular, has recently entered into a distribution agreement with Hein & Co. Hein has the stock of Ames back volumes and has reprinted those volumes that are out of print. Hein has also agreed to give discounts on Ames volumes to Selden members similar to those that Ames has offered in the past. Hein is also planning to place the back volumes of the Ames Foundation’s series online, and these, too, will be available to individual Selden members in good standing free of charge. We call your attention to the “web page” for the Selden Society. This contains a complete list of Selden publications and other information that we hope will be useful. It is available on the “world-wide web” at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/Programs/selden_society/. Links may found on this page to Selden’s London web page. A similar “web page” for the Ames Foundation is available at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/Programs/ames_foundation/. Members will have received an announcement of the Society’s Annual General Meeting which will be held at the Old Hall of Lincoln’s Inn on Tuesday, 7 July, right before the Nineteenth British Legal History Conference in Exeter. It will be followed by a lecture by Dr Anthony Taussig on “Collecting English Legal Manuscripts.” (Mr Taussig’s collection is the subject of volume 15 of our Supplementary Series.) Following this our customary buffet supper will be offered in the crypt. Further information may be obtained from the Secretary at the addresses listed above.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Donahue, Jr. David Warrington