Charles Viner (jurist)

He then resided at Aldershot, Hampshire, and had chambers in the Temple (King's Bench Walk), but was not called to the bar.

[3] By his will, dated 29 December 1755, Viner left the remainder copies of the Abridgment and his residuary real and personal estate (value about £12,000) to the University of Oxford upon trusts.

[1] Viner devoted half a century to the compilation of A General Abridgment of Law and Equity.

It was printed on a press at his home in Aldershot on paper manufactured under Viner's own direction with his initials 'C.V.'

[3] Based on the work of Viner's predecessor Henry Rolle, but built up from other material, it is a vast encyclopædia of legal lore.

[1] J. G. Marvin wrote of it:[4] This laborious author spent nearly fifty years upon his Abridgment, the most voluminous production of any single individual in the whole bibliography of the Common Law.

The author is thought, by Mr. Hargrave, to have erred in making Rolle's Abridgment the basis of his.

"It is a cumbersome compilation, by no means accurate or complete in its citations, and difficult to use, from the irregularity with which the matter is distributed, and from the inadequacy, and sometimes the inaptness of the subdivisions.

Almost every thing valuable in the old Abridgments is, indeed, to be found in it, but sometimes so ill arranged, that the search is almost as troublesome as it would be to run over the whole title in Fitz-herbert or Brooke.

Its principal merit is its extent; and, though in some points it is redundant, in others defective, and in all irregular, it is a vast Index of the law, which time and patience can master; and it often rewards the labour when all other resources have failed."

Furthermore, there are a good many determinations in his publication, either not at all, or not so fully and accurately reported elsewhere, which are generally received as authority.