Sty. - Style's King's Bench Reports (England and Wales)

• Jurisdiction: United Kingdom
• Dates covered: 1658
• Publisher/Reporter: William Style

Also called Style's Modern Reports or, simply, Modern Reports.

Forming part of the English Reports, Volume 82.

Published cases decided from 1646 to 1655.

The title page:

"Narrationes modernae or Modern Reports begun in the now Upper Bench Court at Westminster....

"By William Style of the Inner Temple, Esquire."

William Style was one of the law reporters forced to cease publishing his law reports in Law French and he voiced his criticism in the preface to his Modern Reports, circa 1658:

"I have made these reports speak English, not that I believe they will be thereby more generally useful, for I have been always and yet am of opinion, that that part of the common law which is in English hath only occasioned the making of unquiet spirits contentiously knowing, and more apt to offend others than to defend themselves; but I have done it in obedience to authority, and to stop the mouths of such of this English age, who, though they be confessedly different in their minds and judgment, as the builders of Babel were in their language, yet do think it vain, if not impious, to speak or understand more than their own mother tongue."

The preface to his law reports is so long and wordy - typical of law reports of that particular era - that we attached it in its entirety: Style's Modern Reports (PDF)