from April 25, 1740, to May 9, 1741 is the title of a collection of nominate reports, by Thomas Barnardiston, of cases decided by the Court of Chancery,[1] between approximately 1740 and 1741.
[2] In 1847, J. G. Marvin said: There has been a considerable diversity of opinion respecting the merits of the Reports.
Mr. Preston, in an argument before the Lord Chancellor remarked-"We come now, my lord, to the important case of Eliot v. Merryman, on which conveyancers have at all times relied as very material to the law affecting the case now before the court, which is in Barnardiston's Reports."
I fear that is a book of no great authority; I recollect, in my younger days, it was said of Barnardiston, that he was accustomed to slumber over his note book, and the wags in the rear took the opportunity of scribbling nonsense in it."
His reports have a peculiar value, from the fact of containing the decisions of the great Lord Hardwicke, and if the author has occasionally fallen into slight errors, they are neither so glaring or numerous as to detract much from their merits, or render them unworthy of a place in every lawyer's library.