In 1753, William Blackstone delivered the first series of lectures on English law ever presented at an English university.
Having recently been denied appointment to a professorship of civil (or Roman) law, he organized a private course at Oxford on English law, a subject which he recognized had "generally been reputed (however unjustly) of a dry and unfruitful nature."
Charles Viner later left the proceeds of his own abridgment of English law to Oxford. In 1758, two years after Viner's death, Blackstone became the first Vinerian Professor of the English Common Law.
He inaugurated his professorship by arguing against the traditional view that the Roman legal system was the only one worthy of university study. Before leaving his professorship eight years later, Blackstone began to publish his lectures. The four volumes of his Commentaries appeared between 1765 and 1769.
from Rediscovering Blackstone, Alan W. Alschuler, 145 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1996)
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