Thomas Branch
British writer
Thomas Branch (fl. 1738–1753), was a British author. His Principia Legis et Æquitatis was regarded as "the accumulated spirit and wisdom of ... the English law."
Life
Nothing is known of Branch's life, but if the "lady of Thomas Branch, Esq." in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1769 was his wife, it may be presumed that he was still alive at that time.
Works
Branch was the author of Thoughts on Dreaming (1738), and Principia Legis et Æquitatis (1753).
Thoughts on Dreaming was a response to Andrew Baxter's Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul (1733), in which Branch refuted Baxter's argument that dreams are the work of supernatural agents.
Principia Legis et Æquitatis was a collection of maxims, definitions, and remarkable sayings about law and equity, mostly in Latin, presented in alphabetical order. Several editions were published, including an enlarged fifth edition of 1822, which gave translations of the Latin, and an American edition of 1824. It was highly thought of as a student's textbook.
“Thomas Branch” enters the record as british writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Branch and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Thomas Branch” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Thomas, Branch and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 7, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q7787825. VIAF identifies the subject as 241566336. The Library of Congress control number is n86843149. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1738, 1753, 1769 and 1733.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Branch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.