This volume presents the records of all cases in the court of King’s Bench arising in the ancient county of Stafford between 1740 and 1800. They are a rich source for social, political, local, and family historians, as well as for students of common law legal history. The General Introduction, along with introductory accounts of each of the principal kinds of proceedings (criminal, qui tam, and ex officio informations; certioraris on indictments and convictions; habeas corpus and contempts), show how to find cases, follow process, and understand the conventions and procedures of the court and its bureaucracy, as well as the role of solicitors, barristers, commissioners, deponents, jurors, and judges.

This is the first publication of records of the King’s Bench for the eighteenth century; the only other published calendar ends in 1442. The court’s ‘Crown Side’ dealt with all criminal cases before it, and the records for the eighteenth century are both unindexed by county and vast in extent. The court’s procedures, elaborated by its clerks as well as the law, were formidably complex. King’s Bench was the supreme court of criminal law for England and Wales, through its command of the prerogative writs of habeas corpus, certiorari, prohibition, and mandamus; it was the sole court in which criminal and ex officio informations could be used to prosecute serious misdemeanours, including riot and sedition.

Cases heard there constitute a large part of the law reports, since the decisions of its judges changed the law, but reported cases constitute less than one percent of those that came before them, and are very unrepresentative of its daily work.