having committed those thoughts to paper, in the shape of a small treatise, he was prevailed upon, by Sir Charles Mordaunt, and other members of Parliament, who had brought in a bill to settle that controverted point, to publish it in March, 1758, under the title of Considerations on Copyholders. The bill soon after passed into a law.

Mr. Viner having by his will left the copyright of his Abridgment, together with other property to a considerable amount, to the University of Oxford, to found a professorship, fellowships, and scholarships of common law, Dr. Blackstone was, on the 20th of October, 1758, unanimously elected Vinerian Professor. This situation (he informs us in his introduction to the Commentaries) led him to investigate the elements of law, and the grounds of our civil polity, with greater assiduity and attention than many have thought it necessary to do; and, on the 25th of the same month, he read his first introductory lecture; one of the most elegant and admired compositions which any age or country ever produced this he published at the request of the ViceChancellor and Heads of Houses, and afterwards prefixed to the first volume of his Commentaries.

His lectures were received with such universal approbation, that he was requested by a noble personage, who superintended the education of George the Third, then Prince of Wales, to read them to his Royal Highness: being at that time engaged to a numerous class of pupils in the University, he thought he could not, consistently with that engagement, comply with the request, and therefore declined it. But he transmitted copies of many of them for the perusal of his Royal Highness: who, far from being offended at an excuse grounded on so honourable a motive, was pleased to order a handsome gratuity to be presented to him. It is more than probable that this early knowledge of the character and abilities of the Professor laid the foundation in the breast of his Majesty George the Third, of that good opinion and esteem, which afterwards promoted him to the Bench; and, occasioned immediately after his decease, the extension of the Royal bounty to his widow and his numerous family.

In the course of this year he was strongly pressed by Lord Chief Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice (afterwards Earl) Bathurst,

to accept the coif, which he declined. In the year 1759, he published two small pieces merely relative to the University: the one intituled Reflections on the opinions of Messrs. Pratt, Morton, and Wilbraham, relating to Lord Litchfield's Disqualification, who was then a candidate for the Chancellorship; the other, A Case for the Opinion of Counsel on the Right of the University to make new Statutes.

In June, 1759, he bought chambers in the Temple, resigned the office of Assessor of the Vice-Chancellor's Court, which he had held for about six years, and, soon after, the Stewardship of All Souls College; and, in Michaelmas Term, resumed his attendance at Westminster; still continuing to pass some part of the year at Oxford, and to read his lectures there, at such times as did not interfere with the London Law Terms.

In November, 1759, he published a new edition of the Great Charter and Charter of the Forest; which added much to his former reputation, not only as a lawyer, but as an antiquarian and an able historian. The execution of the mechanical part of this edition, also, reflected great honour on the author, as the principal reformer of the Clarendon press, from whence no work had ever before issued equal in beauty to this.

This publication drew him into a short controversy with the late Dr. Lyttelton, then Dean of Exeter, and afterwards Bishop of Carlisle.-The Dean, to assist Mr. Blackstone in his publication, had favoured him with the collation of a very curious antient Roll, containing both the Great Charter and that of the Forest, of the 9th of Henry the 3rd, which he and many of his friends judged to be an original. The editor of the Charters, however, thought otherwise, and excused himself (in a note in his Introduction) for having made no use of its various readings, "as the plan of his edition was confined to Charters which had "passed the Great Seal, or else to authentic entries and enrol"ments of record, under neither of which classes the Roll in "question could be ranked."

The Dean, concerned for the credit of his Roll, presented to the Antiquarian Society a vindication of its authenticity, dated June the 8th, 1761; and Mr. Blackstone delivered in an answer to the same learned body, dated May the 28th, 1762, alleging, as an excuse for the trouble he gave them, "that he should "think himself wanting in that respect which he owed to the

"Society and Dr. Lyttelton, if he did not either own and cor"rect his mistake, in the octavo edition then preparing for the "press, or submit to the Society's judgment the reasons at large, "upon which his suspicions were founded." These reasons, we may suppose, were convincing, for here the dispute ended*.

About the same time, he also published a small Treatise on The Law of Descents in Fee Simple.

Upon the dissolution of Parliament in 1761, he was returned burgess for Hindon, in Wiltshire; and, on the 6th of May following, a patent of precedence was granted him to rank as King's Counsel, having, a few months before, declined the office of Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in Ireland.

These marks of distinction, and the celebrity he had acquired as a writer, operating most favourably on the professional views of Mr. Blackstone, by a considerable increase of practice, on the 5th of May, 1761, he married Sarah, the eldest surviving daughter of the late James Clitherow, of Boston House, in the county of Middlesex, Esquire; with whom he passed near nineteen years, in the enjoyment of the purest domestic and conjugal felicity, (for which no man was better calculated), and which, he used often to declare, was the happiest part of his life. By this lady he had nine children, the eldest and youngest of whom died infants; seven survived him, viz. Henry, James, William, Charles, Sarah, Mary, and Philippa; the eldest was not much above the age of sixteen at his death.

Having by his marriage vacated the fellowship at All-Souls, he was, on the 28th of July, 1761, appointed Principal of New Inn Hall, by the Earl of Westmoreland, the then Chancellor of Oxford. This proved not only an agreeable residence, during the periods of delivering these lectures, but conferred a rank in the University which greatly facilitated his labours in promoting whatever he conceived to be useful and beneficial to that learned body.

It may be here mentioned, that as an Antiquarian, and a member of this Society, into which he was admitted February the 5th, 1761, he wrote "A Letter to the "Honourable Daines Barrington, describ"ing an antique seal, with some observa"tions on its original, and the two succes"sive Controversies which the disuse of it "afterwards occasioned."

This Seal, having the royal arms of

England on it, was one of those which all persons having the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were obliged by the statute of the 1 Edw. VI. ch. 2, to make use of. This letter is printed in the 3rd volume of the Archæologia; but his discussion of the merits of the Lyttelton Roll, though containing much good antiquarian criticism, has not yet been made public.

About this time an attempt being made to restrain the power given him, as Professor, by the Vinerian statutes, to nominate a deputy to read the solemn lectures, he published a state of the case, for the perusal of the Members of Convocation, upon which it was dropped.

In the following year, 1762, he collected and re-published several of his pieces under the title of Law Tracts, in two volumes, octavo.

In 1763, on the establishment of the Queen's family, he was appointed Solicitor-General to her Majesty; and was chosen about the same time a Bencher of the Middle Temple.

Many imperfect and incorrect copies of his lectures being in circulation, and a pirated edition of them having been published, or preparing for publication, in Ireland, induced him to print a correct edition himself; and, in November, 1765, the first volume appeared, under the title of Commentaries on the Laws of England; and in the course of the four succeeding years the other three volumes.

In the year 1766, he resigned the Vinerian Professorship, and the Principality of New Inn Hall; finding he could not discharge the personal duties of the former, consistently with his professional attendance in London, or the delicacy of his feelings as an honest man.

When his views were first turned towards the Vinerian Professorship, he had formed a design of settling in Oxford for life: and flattered himself, that, by annexing the office of Professor to the Principality of one of the Halls, (or perhaps converting it into a college), and placing Mr. Viner's fellows and scholars under their Professor, a society might be established for students of the common law, similar to that of Trinity-hall in Cambridge, for civilians.

This plan was much favoured by Mr. Viner's will, by which he left to the University "all his personal estate, books, &c., for the "constituting, establishing, and endowing one or more Fellow"ship or Fellowships, and Scholarship or Scholarships, in any "College or Hall in the said University, as to the Convocation "shall be thought most proper for Students of the Common "Law." But, notwithstanding this plain direction to establish them in some College or Hall, the clause from the Delegates,

which ratified this designation, was rejected by a negative in convocation.

This unexpected, and, as was assumed by his friends, unmerited rejection, destroyed Mr. Blackstone's prospects of a lasting settlement at Oxford. His views of an established society for the study of the common law were at an end, and no scope left for the exercise of that ardour for improvement which so strongly marked his character through life.

In 1768, Mr. Blackstone was returned to serve in parliament, for the borough of Westbury, in Wiltshire, and took part in the debates relative to the election of Mr. John Wilkes, when his adversaries in the house stated that many of the positions advanced by him on that occasion, were strongly opposed to the doctrines laid down in the Commentaries; and he was also attacked in a pamphlet supposed to have been written by Sir W. Meredith. To this pamphlet he published a reply, under the title of "A Letter to the Author of the Question Stated," which was severely commented upon by Junius, who concluded his bitter criticism thus: "If I were personally your enemy, I should dwell with a malignant pleasure upon those great and useful qualities you certainly possess, and by which you once acquired, though they could not preserve to you, the respect and esteem of your country. I should enumerate the honours you have lost, and the virtues you have disgraced; but having no private resentments to gratify, I think it sufficient to have given my opinion of your public conduct, leaving the punishment it deserves to the closet and to yourself."

In the same year, Dr. Priestly animadverted on some positions in the Commentaries, relative to offences against the doctrine of the Established Church, to which he published an answer.

The reputation of Mr. Blackstone as an able lawyer was now so thoroughly established, that, had he possessed a constitution equal to the fatigues attending the most extensive business of the profession, he might probably have obtained its most lucrative emoluments and highest offices. The offer of the SolicitorGeneralship, on the resignation of Mr. Dunning in January, 1770, opened the most flattering prospects to his view. But the attendance on its complicated duties at the Bar, and in the House of Commons, induced him to decline it.

He, however, readily accepted the office of Judge of the Com