Introduction

You will very shortly come to an extract of a report of the case of Henthorn v Fraser, where the issue was whether a person who has offered to sell certain property to another person can withdraw (or, to use the technical term, revoke) that offer after the other person has put his acceptance of the offer in the post but before the prospective seller has received it.

We have taken the report from The Law Reports, where it appears in one of the volumes which contain decisions of the Chancery Division of the High Court and decisions of the Court of Appeal arising from appeals against those decisions. (In fact, as you will see when you read the report carefully, this particular case was heard at first instance by the Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster. This court of chancery no longer exists but it was the local equivalent of the High Court – to which its jurisdiction passed when it was abolished – so nothing turns on this particular historical oddity.)

We have reproduced the report in substantially the same form as that in which it was originally published, subject to the following alterations.

First, it has been sufficient for our purposes to reproduce only the head-note and the judgment of Lord Herschell. However, if you read the original report you will see that both the other judges concurred. More particularly, Kay LJ delivered a fully reasoned judgment, while Lindley LJ simply delivered a short statement of his concurrence.

Secondly, as well as being selective in relation to the text, we have also edited it in three other ways. The first, and most obvious, aspect of our editing is that we have inserted text boxes at various points in order to provide a commentary on either what has just been said, or what is about to be said, in the text. Additionally, we have modernised some of the typography. Finally, we have expanded the footnotes by including explanations of the case references.