A Report of the Case of Horner against Liddiard, upon the question of What Consent is necessary to the Marriage of Illegitimate Minors; determined, on the 24th May 1799, in the Consistorial Court of London, by the Right Honourable Sir William Scott, Chancellor of the Diocese: with an Introductory Essay upon the Theory and the History of Laws relating to Illegitimate Children, and to the Encouragement of Marriage in General.

[iv], viii, 189, [3]pp., 8vo. With a final leaf of advertisements, disbound. Title inscribed "For the Right Hon: Lord Auckland." First edition of Sir Alexander Croke s first publication which, as the DNB says, was commissioned by Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell, whose acquaintance Croke had made at Oxford. . . . The case (Horner v. Liddiard) related to the marriage of illegitimate minors, and Croke published his report with an essay on the laws affecting illegitimacy. The publication brought Croke into notice, and he was. . . rewarded with a judgeship in the vice-admiralty court of Halifax, Nova Scotia, which Croke held from 1801 to 1815. The judgement holding the marriage to be void was based on the absence of a guardian appointed by the Court of Chancery; its injustice was one of the bases for the amendment of the Marriage Act twenty years later.