English legal writer
Danby Pickering (fl. 1769) was an English legal writer.
Biography
Born circa 1716 (christened 17 March that year),[1] the son of Danby Pickering of Hatton Garden, Middlesex[2] by his wife Mary (née Horson),[1] Pickering was admitted, on 28 June 1737, a student at Gray's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 8 May 1741.[2] He married Ann Walter or Walten on 12 July 1736,[1] and died on 24 March 1781.[3]
Works
Pickering re-edited the original four volumes of Modern Reports (1682–1703), with the supplements of 1711, 1713, and 1716, under the title Modern Reports, or Select Cases adjudged in the Courts of King's Bench, Chancery, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, since the Restoration of His Majesty King Charles II to the Fourth of Queen Anne, London, 1757. He also edited Sir Henry Finch's Law, or a Discourse thereof in Four Books, London, 1759.[2][4]
His major work was an abridgment of the Statute Book, entitled The Statutes at Large, from Magna Charta to the end of the Eleventh Parliament of Great Britain, Cambridge, 1762–9, 24 vols.; continued with his name on the title-page to 1807, and thereafter without his name until 1809. The first volume of the series starts in the year 1225, or 9 Hen III, when Henry III confirmed Magna Carta. The Latin of the early years is translated into English in a dual column structure. The dual column is employed as well for the translations from Norman French, which continue throughout the reign of Edward IV.[5] Although he was nominally a French king, Richard III appears to have governed (while he did) in the English tongue.[6]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rigg, James McMullen (1896). "Pickering, Danby". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 45. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 241.