A Report of Some Proceedings on the Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Goal Delivery: For the Trial of the Rebels in the Year 1746 in the County of Surry, and of Other Crown Cases

by Michael Foster

Excerpt from A Report of Some Proceedings on the Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Goal Delivery: For the Trial of the Rebels in the Year 1746 in the County of Surry, and of Other Crown Cases
I now submit to Publick Censure a Report of a few Crown Cases which for the most Part have fallen within my own Observation, and in which I have taken some Share. What other Notes I have taken meerly for my own Use, are too crude and imperfect to admit of a Publication; and as I have neither Leisure nor Inclination to revise them, They will never see the Light.
I have in this Report taken a larger Scope, and entered more fully into the State of many of the Cases and the Reasoning on them, than most of my Cotemporaries have done; and this hath drawn Me into a greater Length than They have allowed to themselves. Brevity I have endeavoured to consult as far as my Subject will admit of it. But the Affectation of Brevity at the Expence of Perspicuity can answer no valuable Purpose.
Learned Men who have employed their Time in transmitting to Posterity with Accuracy, Precision and true Judgment an History of Cases of Weight and Difficulty falling within their own Experience, have been real Benefactors to the Publick; and their Memory is and ever will be treated with due Esteem.

449 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1762

About the author

Sir Michael Foster (1689–1763) was an English judge.

Foster was the son of Michael Foster, an attorney, and was born at Marlborough, Wiltshire, on 16 December 1689. After attending the free school of his native town, he matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, 7 May 1705. He does not appear to have taken any degree. He was admitted a student of the Middle Temple on 23 May 1707, and was called to the bar in May 1713. Meeting with little success in London, he retired to Marlborough, whence he afterwards removed to Bristol, where as a local counsel he gained a great reputation. In August 1735 he was chosen recorder of Bristol, and in Easter term 1736 became a Serjeant-at-law. He held the post of recorder for many years, and upon his resignation in 1764 was succeeded by Daines Barrington. During Foster's tenure of office several important cases came before him. In the case of Captain Samuel Goodere who was tried for the murder of his brother, Sir John Dineley Goodere, 2nd Baronet, in 1741, the right of the city of Bristol to try capital offences committed within its jurisdiction was fully established.