Michael Dalton (legal writer)
Michael Dalton (1564–1644) was an English barrister and legal writer, author of two works well known in his time. Life. He was the son of Thomas Dalton of Hildersham, Cambridgeshire, and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1580. He was associated with Lincoln's Inn, moving there from Furnivall's Inn, being called to the bar and eventually becoming a bencher. He resided at West Wratting, Cambridgeshire, and was in the commission of the peace for the county. Works. Dalton published: Dalton's works were sufficiently widely known for it to be suggested that his view  of rules of evidence can account for conduct of the defendants in the trial of Thomas Cornell for murdering his mother, Rebecca Cornell, in Rhode Island in 1673. Material on witchcraft passed into later editions of the "Countrey Justice" from earlier works (the "Discoverie of Witches" (1613) of Thomas Potts and the "Guide to Grand-Jury Men" (1627) of Richard Barnard), and was transmitted from there to the "An Assistance to Justices of the Peace" (1683) of Joseph Keble. Dalton also wrote an unpublished religious work in the tradition of "Acts and Monuments", finished 1634 but left in manuscript. It  was considered for publication by the Long Parliament in 1641, but the more extensive work of Thomas Harding was preferred by a committee under Edward Dering; in fact neither was printed. There exists a summary in the British Library. It is an abstract of events in chronological sequence from the foundation of Christianity to ‘the discovery of anti-christ’ in the sixteenth century. Personal life. Dalton married first, Frances, a daughter of William Thornton, and secondly Mary, a daughter of Edward Allington. In 1631 Dalton was fined for having allowed his daughter Dorothy to marry her maternal uncle, Sir Giles  Allington of Horseheath, Cambridgeshire. The fine, however, was remitted.