Anthony Taussig collection of English legal manuscripts

A collection of approximately 400 manuscript items, including letters; letterbooks; copies of statutes, pleadings, opinions and precedents; King's Bench reports; abridgments and commonplace books of cases; and other papers, documenting the development and practice of English law and the evolution of the English legal system from the thirteenth into the twentieth century. Included are an early copy of Henry de Bracton's De legibus Anglie; a fourteenth-century pocket compilation of "Statuta vetera" that opens with a copy of the Magna Carta; case reports from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries; letters, opinions and notes by a range of English legal figures, including William Blackstone, Edward Coke, Edward Law, Lord Thurlow, and Francis Wedderburn; and guides to court proceedings and practice from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In addition, the collection contains a letterbook of Wiliam Tidd; papers of Sir Michael Foster and his heirs, including correspondence related to the Corn Riots of 1753 and Foster's work on habeas corpus; and correspondence and other documentation related to the operation of the Poor Laws in England.