BUSINESS AT LAW: RETRIEVING COMMERCIAL DISPUTES FROM EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHANCERY

Abstract

Recent work on the records of civil litigation in the central courts of Westminster has refined and extended our knowledge of levels of litigation and the types of dispute pursued at law in early modern England. This article discusses two interrelated business disputes at the port of Whitehaven in the first half of the eighteenth century pursued by two of its prominent merchants, both frequent litigants in a period when litigation overall was declining, and suggests some reasons for that decline. It matches the formal court records of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Chancery with some illuminating, often acerbic, private correspondence, thereby exploring the process and background of litigation, and demonstrating how a third party could influence the conduct and direction of the disputes, while himself remaining almost invisible in the formal legal record.