In 1730 a set of State Trials was published, containing reports, usually verbatim, of many criminal and other important trials, along with related material. The series reports some 200 cases from the late-14th to the early-18th centuries, and consists of six volumes, each running to several hundred pages. This text comprises selected cases from this series, all taken from the 17th or very early-18th centuries; all, apart from the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, from the post-Restoration period. Almost all the cases recounted here were criminal trials.
