Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Furrer v Snelling


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to English contract law. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Furrer v Snelling

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This is the sort of thing you might expect to be notable, but my fairly thorough WP:BEFORE search turned up pretty much nothing. The only secondary sources I could find are the 1793 Viner treatise (which just cites the case) and a listicle on a legal firm's website apparently taken from Wikipedia. Seriously, that's it. As partial as I am to 800-year-old legal cases, there's not much we can do about a decision that's received basically no coverage whatsoever in all that time. Fails the GNG. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:57, 24 February 2024 (UTC) Relisting comment: Relisting. We have a Merge suggestion and two different target articles suggested. It would be helpful to hear other editors opinion on this and which possible target might be better or if this article would be better deleted. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 08:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law and England. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:57, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If you want to find this documented, the place to look is Judge David Jenkins 1661 Rerum judicatarum centuri&aelig; octo, described in at least one history as the most important of Jenkins's works to the legal profession, and coming top of several lists of law reports in years gone by, and ironically not mentioned in Wikipedia's article on Jenkins at all. The difficulty for English editors is that it was written in French and Latin. There is a 1777 translation into English by Theodore Barlow and an annotated 1885 one by Charles Francis Morrell.  What Viner in fact cites is Jenk 324, and this is what that is.  You can even read the original page 324 on-line at .  Jenkins writing his own summary of the case in French 4 centuries after the fact is secondary sourcing too.  But this is basically only one secondary source at this point.  Uncle G (talk) 10:39, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge without prejudice to Covenant (law) or English contract law, or to a sub-article of either. (What we really need here is a separate article on covenants in English law, and probably one on their history; and the chapters in Selwyn and Chambers, for example, certainly contain enough material.) This case is also, and possibly more often, cited as "Farrer v Snelling" and is also reported at 1 Rolle 335 (which is 81 ER 235 and sometimes cited as page 351 of Rolle) and 3 Bulstrode 155 (which is 81 ER 133). There is no reason to assume that any of these reports contain any primary content. The case was decided during the regnal year 13 Jac, which is actually about 1615 or 1616, and is certainly not 1220. Some of the old reports circulated in manuscript before they were printed. There are numerous abbreviations of Rolle's, Bulstrode's, Jenkin's and the English Reports, and even of the word "and" (v, versus, against etc), which does not make it easy to search for this. (For the avoidance of doubt, the page numbers of the old reports may depend on which printed edition you use). The case is cited and discussed in numerous treatises, under the heading of "covenant" (eg those of Isaac Espinasse, William Selwyn, William Nelson, Charles Harcourt Chambers, Peregrine Bingham and John Mallory) and "pleading and procedure in breach of promise" (A W B Simpson, wrongly dated 1605) and "error" (Charles Viner and John Lilly). Cited as "Ferrar v Snelling" in Thwaites v Ashfield in the Modern Reports ; and as "Farrar v Snelling" in the same case in Comberbach, and in Mallory; and as "Ferrer v Snelling" in Repertorium Juridicum . (There were no standard spellings in the 17th century). The case appears to have been of some importance as a precedent, at least up to the 19th century. We have the ratio decidendi of the case from many sources. James500 (talk) 13:02, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 05:41, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * More than two possible merger targets were proposed, as there are already a number of sub-articles of those two. The deletion of this article would violate the policy WP:ATD. This precedent was included in standard works and, on the face of the sources, was part of the law of covenant, for more than two centuries up to at least 1859 ; and it is still included in history books . It is not something that could be omitted from Wikipedia altogether without compromising the integrity of our articles on this subject. James500 (talk) 17:32, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Merge with English contract law: There might not be enough in the way of sourcing for an article, but something can be said about the decision. The English contract law article seems to be a better place to merge to than Covenant (law) since it already has a section on damages. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.