The acquisition by the Bodleian Library of eight legal notebooks associated with the name of Thomas Robinson is the occasion for the following note about them, their author and his office. With the exception of two volumes of precedents, the Robinson notebooks constitute the surviving portion of a series of brief reports of cases in the Common Pleas from 1657 to 1678. The first (MS Eng. misc. f. 500), marked AAA on the vellum cover, is inscribed on the fly: ‘Liber Thome Robinson de Staple Inne 1650, Note Booke upon passages in Court’. The ‘passages’ referred to in this title begin at the back of the volume on fo. 139 (reversing) and are not reports, but ‘special memoranda’ or notes of events affecting the practice of an attorney. They begin in Michaelmas term 1641, and include adjournments of the term by proclamation, alterations in the process of the court after Charles I's execution, the change to English and secretary hand after the quindene of Easter 1651, the appointment of Cromwell as lord protector, the elevation of Hale and other serjeants and judges in 1653/4, the death of Oliver Cromwell and a brief history of his son's Parliament, and finally the Restoration. There are ten leaves of notes of cases from 1650 to 1654 (ff. 1–10), but the main series of reports begins (fo. 137, reversing) in Hilary term 1657 and continues until Hilary term 1659.