A Treatise on the Action of Ejectment. Second Edition, London, 1781

Runnington on the Action of Ejectment Runnington, Charles. A Treatise on the Action of Ejectment. London: Printed by W. Strahan and M. Woodfall, 1781. [xviii], 348, [56] pp. Title page preceded by publisher advertisement. Octavo (8-1/4" x 5"). Contemporary calf, blind fillets to boards, raised bands to spine, lettering piece lacking. Light rubbing to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities, some chipping to spine ends, boards beginning to separate, corners bumped and somewhat worn. Moderate toning to text, light soiling to margins of a few leaves, early owner signature ("John Williams Atty / Carmarthen") to head of title page. $350. * Second edition, a reissue of the first edition (1781). Runnington's treatise concerns a curious area of English land law with feudal origins. Actions for ejectment concern title to land, wrongful dispossession of land, damages to land and the related concept of mesne profits, sums earned from wrongfully occupied land. It is a rewritten edition of Sir Geoffrey Gilbert's Law and Practice of Ejectments (1741). Wentworth says "[It] is an excellent book, and contains correct and valuable precedents." A reissue was published in Dublin in 1792. John Williams [1757-1810] was a Carmarthen, Wales, barrister and legal scholar who contributed to the tenth and eleventh editions of Blackstone's Commentaries (1787, 1788) and prepared the well-regarded third edition of Saunders's Reports of Cases and Pleadings in the Court of King's Bench (1799). Wentworth, A Complete System of Pleading (1797-1799) cited in Marvin, Legal Bibliography 623. English Short-Title Catalogue N13979.…