Charles Viner

Charles Viner (16785 June 1756) was an English jurist, known as the author of Viner's Abridgment, and the benefactor of the Vinerian chair and the Vinerian Scholarship at the University of Oxford.

Life The son of Mary and Charles Viner, a draper of Salisbury, he was baptised at the church of St Thomas, Salisbury, on 3 November 1678. He studied for a time at Oxford, where he matriculated at Hart Hall on 19 February 1695. He then resided at Aldershot, Hampshire, and had chambers in the Temple (King's Bench Walk), but was not called to the bar. He married Raleigh Weekes (1681–1761), a descendant of Walter Raleigh, on 16 November 1699 at Saint Ethelburga's church in Bishopsgate in London. There were no children from the marriage.

Viner died at Aldershot on 5 June 1756.

Based on the work of Viner's predecessor Henry Rolle, but built up from other material, it is a vast encyclopædia of legal lore. An Alphabetical Index was compiled by Robert Kelham (1758). A second edition of the work, including the index, appeared at London in 1791–4, 24 vols., and was followed by a supplement by several hands, entitled An Abridgment of the Modern Determinations in the Courts of Law and Equity, London, 1799–1806, 6 vols.