The 1657 “Lane’s Reports” Book

The full title of this book is: “Reports in the Court of Exchequer, Beginning int the third and ending in the ninth year of the Raign of the late King James. By the Honourable Richard Lane, Late of Middle Temple, an eminent Professor of the Law, sometime Atturney General to the late Prince Charles, Being the first Collections in that Court hitherto extant”.  It is generally referred to as “Lane’s Reports”.

Published in 1657 in the printing industry of London’s Fleet Street, this book is a root precedent document of English Common Law, as it is the first published reports of cases heard in England’s Exchequer Courts.  The book contains one famous case in particular (Bate’s Case) which has been used to interpret the prerogative of the monarchy to impose taxes.  In modern times, this is a book about which other books have been written.

But this book has several mysteries of its own.  How did it come to be published, given Sir Richard Lane had died seven years before it was published in 1657 (and had been in exile four years before that)?  It seemed to have been published from Lane’s notebooks of court sessions he had attended as a young law student in the first years of the 1600’s.  If so, how had those notebooks come to into the possession of the publishers?  There is a historical account that Lane had entrusted his personal property to a famous individual named Bulstrode Whitlocke when he departed London to join King Charles in Oxford at the outset of the war.  A year later, parliament ordered those possessions confiscated, and a later record indicates Whitelocke had requested to take possession of them.  Most mysterious of all, there is a historical account accusing Whitelocke of denying that he even knew Sir Richard Lane when Lane’s son showed up to collect those books at his father’s request.

It is also notable that the book was even published.  1657 was the height of parliamentary rule under the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. There was a fever to quash all things suggesting legitimacy of the monarchy.  Publishing books of legal cases was good business, though, and this book was special. This explains some odd things about how the title page is presented.  Richard Lane’s name appears in excessively large text, but his knighthood (granted by King Charles I) is not given.  And he is extolled as the “sometime Atturney General to the Late Prince Charles”, which is odd, since Lane had been Attourney General to Prince Charles when he was 4 years old . In 1657, Prince Charles had become King Charles II in exile, but he was still alive.  The only “late” prince was his father, King Charles I, executed by parliament in 1649.  Clearly, the title of the book had been negotiated to highlight its authorship by the famous law professor, but downplaying any implied nods to the legitimacy of the monarchy.

But as a historical artifact, the book is also fascinating. This much handled but intact volume seems to have been owned by several people on its way to a shelf in a Denver antiques bookstore. It has tiny, very neat notations in the margins made by quill pens.  Its pages are made from high quality paper from France that contains watermarks similar to, but unique from others in the Gravell Watermark Archive. The words printed on its pages was done with such pressure that the text is embossed into the paper.  The text is intelligible with some effort, but includes characters that are odd to the modern eye (eg the lower case “s” that appears to be an “f”). If you study its binding, you can tell how the printed pages were “gathered” (folded) and bound.  Although this volume appears rather plain (as all traces of original adornment of its cover have been worn away), it is a thoroughly fascinating ambassador of its time.

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