Sir William Blackstone

Sir William Blackstone (born July 10, 1723, London, England—died February 14, 1780, Wallingford, Oxfordshire) was an English jurist, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vol. (1765–69), is the best-known description of the doctrines of English law. The work became the basis of university legal education in England and North America. He was knighted in 1770.

Early life

Blackstone was the fourth and posthumous son of Charles Blackstone, a silk merchant of moderate means. His mother died when Blackstone was 12. He was educated by his uncle Thomas Bigg, a London surgeon, first at the Charterhouse (1730–38) and then at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he read not only the classics but also logic and mathematics. Everything that he wrote shows a wide knowledge of literature and an allusive and elegant literary style.

In 1741 he became a student at the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court. In 1743 he was elected a member of All Souls College, Oxford; a year later he became a fellow, and by 1746 he had become a barrister. Although his practice was not very successful, in college affairs he at once proved himself an active and efficient man of business, zealous for order and improvement.

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In 1750 Blackstone took the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. In July 1753 he decided to retire from his practice and concentrate on teaching academic law and doing legal work in and around Oxford. He had been recorder of Wallingford since 1749 and assessor (judge) of the Chancellor’s Court since 1751.

Blackstone had developed a great interest in common law, and in 1753 he began to lecture on that subject. These were the first lectures on English law ever delivered in a university. His listeners were captivated by the lucidity and charm of his style and by the simplicity with which he presented the subject. The latter virtue, however, was attained in part because Blackstone blurred the difficulties and contradictions of English law. He gave the whole subject an air of completeness and mutual interdependence as if it were a uniform logical system, and he suppressed or ignored its archaic aspects and instead acclaimed English law as the embodiment of 18th-century wisdom. He stated his aims in a notice of his lectures dated June 23, 1753:

It is proposed to lay down a general and comprehensive Plan of the Laws of England; to deduce their History; to enforce and illustrate their leading Rules and fundamental Principles; and to compare them with the Laws of Nature and of other Nations.

In 1754 Blackstone published Analysis of the Laws of England, a synopsis of his lectures for the guidance of his pupils. In October 1758 he was elected the first holder of a chair (the Vinerian professorship) of common law. His lectures formed the basis of his Commentaries, which were published in four successive volumes between 1765 and 1769.

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Public life

For several years Blackstone combined academic life in Oxford with an increasingly active public life in London. In 1759 he resigned the office of assessor of the Chancellor’s Court and in 1761 became a bencher (lecturer and supervisor) of the Middle Temple. In March 1761 he was elected member of Parliament for Hindon, in Wiltshire, though he had no great enthusiasm for the post. In May 1761 he married Sarah Clitherow, daughter of James Clitherow of Boston House, Brentford, and bought Priory Place, Wallingford. In July 1761 he was appointed principal of New Inn Hall, and in 1763 he became solicitor general to the queen. Blackstone decided to leave academic life after his proposal to convert New Inn Hall into a specialized college of common law was rejected. In 1766 he resigned both his chair and his headship of the hall.

Blackstone sat in the House of Commons for nine years as a member of Parliament for Hindon (1761–68) and Westbury (1768–70). He was not a zealous politician, describing himself as “amid the Rage of contending Parties, a Man of Moderation.” He spoke mainly on legal and constitutional questions, the most conspicuous of which was the Middlesex election of 1769, when he supported the expulsion of the political reformer John Wilkes from the House of Commons. His opinion on this controversy was attacked as being inconsistent with the legal principles he enunciated in his Commentaries.

In 1770 Blackstone refused the office of solicitor general but accepted that of judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In the 10 years of his judgeship he administered the law satisfactorily but attained no special distinction. Toward the end of the 1770s his health failed; he died in February 1780 and was buried, by his wish, in St. Peter’s Church.