Library of Congress Handbook of Manuscripts, page 505, no. 16.

Bound in vellum, r.e., with a label on the back lettered Common / Place-Book.

The chief entries are as follows:

Treatise on Evidence, pp. 42-101.

Remarks on the Judicature of the Lords, upon Writs of Error, & Appeals in Parliament, pp. 105-109.

Instructions for a Comission [sic] of Lunacy Ex parte the Petitioner, pp. 129-133.

The Modern Practice of the Court of Chancery, pp. 135-173.

For a note on Common-place Books see the next entry.

Rebound in half calf. The 555 leaves measure 14 by 9⅛ inches, ruled in red, with the headings supplied from the headings in the Brief Method; some of the leaves with manuscript notations, manuscript notes also in the text, chiefly in the handwriting of Randolph; the name Townsend written at the end of To the Reader.

Written on a slip of paper and pasted down on one of the new fly-leaves is the following by Sir John Randolph: These Common places did belong to M ^r. Benjamin Harrison and were bought of his Widow by me--There are some few things of his writing in them, which are generally placed under wrong heads, as if he did not know to what Genus the particular species did belong. J. R.

On the title of the Brief Method is pasted a slip on which Jefferson has written: Sir John Randolph’s common-place book.

Sir John Randolph, 1693-1737, of Henrico County, Virginia, King’s attorney of Virginia, entered Gray’s Inn in 1715 and was called to the bar in 1717.

Benjamin Harrison, 1645-1712, was a member of the House of Burgesses.

Common-place Books. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the making of a common-place book was considered one of the essential duties of a student of law. “To facilitate the making of common-place books by providing a framework on which they could be built up there was published in 1680 a Brief method of the law, being an exact alphabetical disposition of all the heads necessary for a perfect common-place . . . It was printed in folio size for convenience in binding with commonplace books. In a brief preface the author explains that numbers are placed opposite the titles, so that if the pages of the commonplace book are numbered to correspond, the Brief method will form an index to it. Altogether there are 1618 heads, with a number of references, from ‘Abatement del breve’ to ‘Wreck: vide Admiralty’. The work is anonymous . . .”--Cowley, p. lxxvi.