Current News

The Harvard Law School has just announced that HLS MS 172, which the Ames Foundation had made digitally available on the University Library’s page delivery service (Mirador), was determined by Professor David Carpenter, of King’s College, London, and Professor Nicholas Vincent, of the University of East Anglia, to be an ‘original’ of the 1300 distribution of the charter, and not a copy as was previously thought. For the story of this discovery click here.

At its annual meeting on 6 June 2025, the Foundation's directors authorized the continuation of the Foundation’s current projects with particular emphasis for this fiscal year on the Records of Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature (MassSCJ), the Deposition Books of the London Consistory Court (LondonDepos), the Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval and Early Modern Jurists (MEMJ), and support of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition (AALT) website. These and others of the Foundation’s larger projects are listed below.

Current Projects

In 2018, the Foundation identified the colonial court records of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature (SCJ) for the eighteenth century as appropriate for a pilot project of digitizing early American court records. The handwriting is good, and the run of records is complete. Professor Sally Hadden of Western Michigan University took charge of the project. It made significant headway in 2020–2 when we obtained permissions from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the SCJ successor) and digital images of the records from FamilySearch. We also entered into a cooperative arrangement for the project with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. We engaged DigitalDivideData (DDD) to transcribe the images. Professor Hadden hired and trained a team of individuals who began annotating the images. The accuracy rate of the transcripts delivered from DDD turned out to be 94–95% instead of the promised 98%. All team members have since been working on transcript verification using tandem reading to achieve a 99% accuracy rate. The project has been slowed by that work and by entry of the corrections. Nonetheless, Professor Hadden has just delivered to the Foundation a clean transcript of 1760–1762 volume and the admiralty volume for posting on our website. She anticipates that the clean transcripts of all the volumes can be completed in the next two or three years.

Since 2010, the Foundation has been supporting Concordia University Professor Shannon McSheffrey’s website of the depositions of witnesses and defendants’ personal responses transcribed and translated from the Libri examinationum of Consistory Court of London for the years 1482–1496. Each set of depositions contains an introduction to the case explaining, to the extent that we can tell, what it was about legally and what social information one can derive from them. An online and print version of the Libri examinationum, at least the medieval ones, is contemplated. In the meantime, the website on which both the text and translation of all the records from 1482 to 1496 was stored crashed in such a way that its contents were unrecoverable. Professor McSheffrey began the painstaking process of reconstructing the website. What is now there is approximately 100 of the 154 cases that date from these years. The complete Latin transcription is available on the this website. For the projected edition a thorough check of the Latin transcription is the first step. That process has begun.

In 2011, the Foundation took responsibility for Catholic University of America emeritus Professor Kenneth Pennington’s Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval Canonists. (still available). We converted it into a modern database and renamed it Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval and Early Modern Jurists (MEMJ). The change in name reflected an ambition to include those jurists who worked in Roman law and to expand the coverage to include jurists who lived in the sixteenth century. Much has been done since 2011 to realize that ambition, and much more needs to be done. In addition to adding more jurists, MEMJ needs continual updating. At its annual meeting in June of 2025, the Foundation’s directors authorized Professor Atria Larson of St. Louis University to take responsibility for MEMJ. The project will move to St. Louis, but it will continue to be hosted on the Ames Foundation website.

Since the death of Professor Robert C. Palmer of the University of Houston School of Law in 2023, the Foundation has been doing what it can to support the continuation of his remarkable database and website, Anglo-American Legal Tradition (AALT), which contains approximately a million images of medieval and early modern plea rolls and related documents under Crown copyright from The [U.K.] National Archives (TNA). Our support has included paying for a photographer to film additional documents and exploring the possibility of creating a list that matches the fronts and backs of the documents and even reading medieval handwriting of the documents by machine. The latter projects are under the direction of Professor Elise Wang of California State University, Fullerton, who is working with a group of graduate students at the California Institute of Technology. They report some progress on both fronts.

Beginning in 2014, the Foundation undertook, in conjunction with the Harvard Law Library, a project to digitize the Library’s extensive collection of medieval manuscripts of English statute books and registers of writs. Some fifty-eight manuscripts that were thought to meet that description are now available online. (One of them turned out to the an ‘original’ of the 1300 distribution of Magna Carta, described in Current News.) A listing of all of them with links to their displays in the Harvard University Library’s page delivery service (Mirador) may be found here. The Foundation has also undertaken to catalogue these manuscripts. A preliminary catalogue, prepared by Charles Donahue, Jr., and Devon Coleman is now available. It contains extensive descriptions of fifty-seven of the manuscripts (less the ‘original’ Magna Carta), with links to the images of the manuscripts themselves, summaries of the contents of the manuscripts, search engines, and the usual ‘front matter’. See the Table of Contents.

Also in 2014, the Foundation began indexing and describing another large collection of material from the Harvard Law Library that has been digitized and placed online: two massive collections of printed treatises from the sixteenth century: the Tractatus ex variis iuris interpretibus collectorum (1549), published in Lyon, and the Tractatus Universi Iuris (1584–1586), published in Venice. Complete metadata for the first four tomes are now available. Author files and author-title lists for the remaining tomes are available in various states of incompletion. MEMJ incorporates data from these files, and in some cases adds to it. See the Index of Contents.

The act book (register) of the official of Ely diocese, dating from 21 March 1374 to 28 February 1382 (ElyAB), has long been known to scholars of church history and canon law as the fullest register of an English ecclesiastical court that survives from the fourteenth century. In 1995, Marcia Stentz, archivist at the Hudson Bay Company’s Archives in Manitoba, undertook an edition of the book with the assistance of Professor Charles Donahue, Jr. Through the kindness of the Ely Diocesan Archivist, images of the entire manuscript are available on this site. The revised final page proofs of The Register of the Official of the Bishop of Ely: 21 March 1374 – 28 February 1382, edited by Marcia Stentz and Charles Donahue, Jr., are also available on this site (PDF). The official digital publication and publication of the paper version in what will be two volumes should follow.

Beginning in 1914, the Foundation began to edit and publish the Year Books of Richard II (1377–1399). Between 1914 and 1996 seven volumes were published. Christopher Whittick, formerly senior archivist in the East Sussex Record Office, with the assistance of Anne Drewry, a private scholar, worked for some time on years 21 and 22, the last years for which surviving manuscripts arranged by year and term are known. This will be the final volume in the series. All of the French texts and English translations of the Year Book texts are in our hands. The Latin records have been identified. Transcription and translation of most of the Latin records still needs to be done, though some progress was made in 2023. There is now a preliminary edition available on this site. Publication of a hard-copy volume probably should wait until those texts that are in the abridgements, but not in the manuscripts arranged by year and term, can be included. That is a longer-term project.

In 2021, the Foundation published online in its ‘e-series’ the second part of Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue, edited by Sharon O’Connor and Mary Bilder with the assistance of Charles Donahue, Jr., and Devon Coleman. This part focuses on the Caribbean and Canadian colonies. The publication may be viewed online in a combined website that includes the first part which focused on the thirteen colonies that became U.S. states. Cloth-bound, paper copies of both parts may be purchased from W. S. Hein & Co., Inc.

In 2020, the Foundation published online in its ‘e-series’ the second edition of Daniel Williman and Karen Corsano’s The Right of Spoil of the Popes of Avignon 1316 – 1415, a complete list of the 1,352 cases and the supporting documentation in which the Avignonese papacy exercised what was later called the papal ‘right of spoil’. The PDF may be viewed and/or downloaded by clicking on the link above. Separate web-versions of the Repertory of Cases and the Index of Persons in the Cases (with accompanying search engines) may also be reached from the same link. Cloth-bound, paper copies may be purchased from W. S. Hein & Co., Inc.

In 2014, the Foundation published online the first part (the second volume in the ‘eseries’): Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue, edited by Sharon O’Connor and Mary Bilder, with the assistance of Charles Donahue, Jr. This part focuses on the thirteen colonies that became U.S. states. Cloth-bound, paper copies may be purchased from W. S. Hein & Co., Inc. This volume received the Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award by the Association of American Law Libraries in 2015.

In 2014, the Foundation published online the first volume in its ‘eseries’, The Spoils of the Pope and the Pirates, 1357: The Complete Legal Dossier from the Vatican Archives, edited by Daniel Williman and Karen Ann Corsano. Cloth-bound, paper copies may be purchased from W. S. Hein & Co., Inc.

In 2014, the Foundation, in conjunction with the Southampton Records Series, published The Common and Piepowder Courts of Southampton, 1426–1483, edited and translated by Tom Olding, with an introduction by Tom Olding and Penny Tucker. The volume is no. 45 in the Southamton Records Series, and was published in their format, two physical parts, paper-bound. With the kind permission of the mayor and council of Southampton and the city archivist, the Foundation has published on its website, for private use only, images of most the documents translated in the volume. The volume is not online, and paper copies are no longer available from the Southampton Records Series. Publication online in Ames format is planned. In the meantime, the Foundation has a few paper copies of the Southampton Records Series version. See Ordering Information.

Paper Publications

• List of paper publications (includes all paper publications from 1914 to the present)
• Ordering information

Online publications – the ‘eseries’ (PDF or HTML)

• The Spoils of the Pope and the Pirates, 1357: The Complete Legal Dossier from the Vatican Archives, edited by Daniel Williman and Karen Ann Corsano (2014) (PDF)
• Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue [Part 1: The Thirteen Colonies that Became U.S. States], edited by Sharon O'Connor and Mary Bilder (2014) (HTML)
• The Right of Spoil of the Popes of Avignon 1316 – 1415 (2020), edited by Daniel Williman and Karen Corsano
• Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Colonies: An Annotated Digital Catalogue: Part 2: The Caribbean and Canadian Colonies (2021), edited by Sharon O’Connor and Mary Bilder

Final page proofs of another volume in this series: The Register of the Official of the Bishop of Ely: 21 March 1374 – 28 February 1382 (2021), edited by Marcia Stentz and Charles Donahue, Jr., have now been posted online.

Volumes in the eseries that have been published are also available in hard-bond paper copies.

Online publications – databases

• Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval and Early Modern Jurists (MEMJ), edited (successively) by Kenneth Pennington, Charles Donahue, Jr., and Atria Larson
• The Harvard Law School’s Collection of Medieval English Statute Books and Registers of Writs: A Catalogue, edited by Charles Donahue, Jr., and Devon Coleman
• Year Book Reports (1268–1535), Index and Paraphrase of All Printed, edited by David Seipp (‘Seipp’s Abridgement’, hosted on the server of the Boston University Law School)

Online publications – manuscripts and early printed books

The following digital publications (in many cases undertaken jointly with the Harvard Law School Library) do not, for the most part, have complete metadata. We are working on it. The images are, however, in all cases, available for those who want to look at them and/or to try to find things in them on their own. In some cases, the metadata may be better than you expect.

• Ames Foundation Digital Collection of Legal History (general description)
• Abridgement of Year Book Cases (HLS MS 41, images of the manuscript)
• Antonius de Butrio, Commentaria (1578, 1575) (digitized printed ed.)
• Bracton’s De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (HTML edition of the Woodbine-Thorne text and digitized manuscripts HLS MS 1 and HLS MS 2)
• Corpus Iuris Civilis (Lyon, 1604) (digitized printed ed.)
• Ely Diocesan Act Book, 1374–1382 (images of the manuscript)
• Digestum Vetus – c.1300 (Houghton b MS typ 121)
• HLS MS 41 (general description)
• Hostiensis, Commentaria (1581) (digitized printed ed.)
• Johannes Andreae, Commentaria (1581) (digitized printed ed.)
• Litchfield Notebooks (63 items to date)
• Novae Narrationes (HLS MS 41, images of the manuscript)
• Panormitanus, Commentaria (1570–1571) (digitized printed ed.)
• Southampton Court Books, 1426–1483 (images of the manuscripts)
• Statham’s Abridgement (1490) (digitized printed ed.)
• Tractatus ex variis iuris interpretibus collectorum (1549) (digitized printed ed. of all volumes)
• Tractatus Universi Iuris (1584–1586) (digitized printed ed. of all volumes)

Online publications – manuscripts not yet ‘published’

The link here takes you directly to the Harvard University Library’s page delivery service (Mirador). All of them have sequence numbers for the images; some of them have folio numbers matched to the sequence numbers. The metadata for MS 189 and 220 are considerably better than that. HLS MS 12 and HLS MS 155 are fully described, along with others of the type, in The Harvard Law School’s Collection of Medieval English Statute Books and Registers of Writs: A Catalogue.

• HLS MS 3 Year Books Eyre of Northamptonshire 3–4 Edward III
• HLS MS 4 Year Books 4–11 Edward III
• HLS MS 5 Year Books 7–12 Edward III
• HLS MS 6 Year Books 20–21 Edward III
• HLS MS 12 Magna Carta cum statutis
• HLS MS 62 Year Books 5–7 Edward III
• HLS MS 63 Codex Justianianeus cum glossis
• HLS MS 64 Decreta Gratiani, ?Sigma recension
• HLS MS 77 Summa de legibus Angliae Gilberto de Thornton attributa
• HLS MS 91 Grand coutumier de Normandie
• HLS MS 155 Registrum brevium
• HLS MS 186 Abridgement of Cases (15th c.)
• HLS MS 189 Tractatus varii de iure canonico
• HLS MS 220 Summa de legibus Normaniae

A listing of all the Law School’s manuscripts, from HLS MS 1 to HLS MS 222, most of which are medieval, may be found in the University Library’s catalogue, HOLLIS.

Online publications – miscellaneous

• Syllabi, Class Materials, Outlines, and Links to Recorded Lectures in Charles Donahue, Jr.’s Legal History Courses: Roman Law, Continental Legal History, Seminar in Continental Legal History, English Legal History, Seminar in English Legal History
• Draft Papers Given at the 18th British Legal History Conference (July, 2007)
• Joseph Henry Smith, Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Plantations with an introductory essay by Julius Goebel, Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950)