The History of the Poor Laws: With Observations

by Richard Burn

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312 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2004

About the author

Richard Burn (1709 – 12 November 1785) was an English legal writer. He was born at Winton, Westmorland, in 1709. Educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1733. In 1736 he was elected, presented, and instituted to the vicarage of Orton in Westmoreland. He was a justice of the peace for the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, and devoted himself to the study of law. He was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle in 1765, an office which he held till his death at Orton on the 12th of November 1785.

Burn’s Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, first published in 1755, was for many years the standard authority on the law relating to justices of the peace. It has passed through innumerable editions. His Ecclesiastical Law (1760), a work of much research, was the foundation upon which were built many modern commentaries on ecclesiastical law. The best edition is that by R. Phillimore (4 vols., 1842). Burn also wrote Digest of the Militia Laws(1760), and A New Law Dictionary (2 vols., 1792).