No, I don’t own the copy of this book pictured, signed by two U.S. presidents. (Credit: Archive.org, John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library)

I was led to this book while researching an article on the history of crime names, but Hale’s Historia Placitorum Coronae is chock full of fun things you didn’t know about criminal law: the difference between petty and major treason, between petty and grand larceny, why counterfeiting coins was considered a form of treason, why we should be lenient to orphans, widows, and the mentally handicapped.

Hale is considered one of the greatest jurists in English history, and not merely because of his writing. The editor’s preface portrays Hale as a rock of incorruptibility and moral rectitude amid the den of iniquity that was England in the second half of the 17th century. He was reputed to be so unbiased and reserved in his outward demeanor that his fellow judges could sometimes hardly tell which way he leaned. (So he was basically U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.) But as Chamber’s Cyclopaedia drily notes, “One of his most notable acts was the condemnation of two old women accused of witchcraft at Bury St. Edmunds in 1662–for he was a devout believer in witches.” (Dang it, Chamber’s! Why’d you have to go ruining all our heroes?) (Although it seems like witch-burning was the 17th century version of slavery: That one thing that makes all your heroes reprehensible–see Browne, Thomas. It’s like how everyone was getting high back when your parents were your age.)