author
John Reeves
d. 1829
A British legal historian and public official, he is best remembered for writing early histories of English law and of Newfoundland's government. His career also took a strongly political turn, linking him to loyalist campaigns during the upheavals of the 1790s.
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About the author
Born in 1752, John Reeves studied at Eton and Oxford before building a career in law and public service. He became first chief justice of Newfoundland, and that experience informed one of his best-known books, History of the Government of the Island of Newfoundland (1793), an important early account of the island's administration.
Reeves also wrote on English legal history. His History of the English Law helped make a long and complicated subject more accessible to readers interested in how English institutions developed over time.
Beyond his writing, he was an active and controversial political figure. In the early 1790s he founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, a loyalist group created in response to radical politics inspired by the French Revolution. He died in 1829.