Giles Jacob (1686 – 8 May 1744) was a British legal writer whose works include a well-received law dictionary that became the most popular and widespread law dictionary in the newly independent United States. Jacob was the leading legal writer of his era, according to the Yale Law Library. The literary works of Giles Jacob did not fare as well as his legal ones, and he feuded with the poet Alexander Pope both publicly and in literary form. Pope named Jacob as one of the dunces in his 1728 Dunciad, referring to Jacob as "the blunderbuss of the law". Jacob is remembered well for his legal writing, though not so much for his poetry and plays. Early life Giles was born in Romsey, Hampshire, and was baptized on 22 November 1686. Among eight children, Giles was the only son of Henry and Susannah Jacob. Henry Jacob was a maltster who lived until 1735. Giles Jacob's legal training included employment by Thomas Freke, and then as a secretary to Sir William Blathwayt. Working for Blathwayt, he engaged in litigation and dispensation, probably in manorial courts. Writing career Jacob's first book, The Compleat Court-Keeper (1713), gives detailed and practical instructions for how to administer estate matters. He combined this with a chronological summary of statute law, and the combination was financially successful. Jacob always had an interest in contemporary poetry and the literary life, and in 1714 he wrote a farce called Love in a Wood, or, The Country Squire. This play was never produced. He persisted, however, and in 1717 he wrote a satire of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock in the form of The Rape of the Smock. The poem was low and bawdy, and the next year he wrote a serious work titled Tractatus de hermaphroditis about the legal status of intersex people, published by Edmund Curll in 1718 (along with the first English-language publication of Ioannes Henricus Meibomius's A treatise of the use of flogging in venereal affairs). In 1719, two works appeared by Jacob, both very successful. The first was Lex constitutionis, which was a thoroughly researched compendium of statute law, common law, and criminal law, schematized according to which powers of the executive branch of the government were involved. While the work's fame and usefulness were surpassed in a few years, Jacob's book was a well regarded analysis. The same year, he produced the