Charles Runnington (1751–1821), serjeant-at-law, born in Hertfordshire on 29 August 1751 (and probably son of John Runnington, mayor of Hertford in 1754), was educated under private tutors, and after some years of special pleading was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in Hilary term 1778. He was made serjeant-at-law on 27 November 1787, and held for a time the office of deputy-judge of the Marshalsea Court. On 27 May 1815 he was appointed to the chief-commissionership in insolvency, which he resigned in 1819. He died at Brighton on 18 January 1821. Runnington married twice—in 1777, Anna Maria, youngest sister of Sir Samuel Shepherd, by whom he had a son and a daughter; secondly, in 1783, Mrs. Wetherell, widow of Charles Wetherell of Jamaica. His only son, Charles Henry Runnington, died on 20 November 1810.

Runnington, besides editing certain well-known legal works by Sir Geoffrey Gilbert, Sir Matthew Hale and Owen Ruffhead was author of A Treatise on the Action of Ejectment (founded on Gilbert's work), London, 1781, 8vo, which was recast and revised as The History, Principles, and Practice of the Legal Remedy by Ejectment, and the resulting Action for Mesne Profits (London, 1795, 8vo),^[1][2] 2nd edition by William Ballantine, published in 1820.^[1]

Runnington edited:

• The History of the Common Law, by Sir Matthew Hale, Fourth Edition, 1779.^[3] The fifth edition was published in 1794,^[4][5] and the sixth edition was published in 1820.^[6]
• The Statutes at Large, by Owen Ruffhead.^[7]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rigg, James McMullen (1897). "Runnington, Charles". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 405.
• Charles F Partington (ed). "Runnington, Charles". The British Cyclopaedia of Biography. 1838. Volume 2. Page 843 [15] [16]. The British Cyclopaedia. Volume 10. Page 843.
• "Runnington (Charles)". The Georgian Era. Vizitelly, Branston and Co. Fleet Street, London. 1833. Volume 2. Page 544.
• H G W, "Memoir of Charles Runnington, Esq" (1817) 71 The European Magazine 379 (May 1817) [17] [18] (Portrait, by T Blood, precedes p 379)
• O'Sullivan and Fuller (eds). The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2006. Volume 12. Page 109.
• "The Repository, No XL" (1817) 71 European Magazine 503 (June 1817)
• Report from the Select Committee on the Insolvent Debtors Acts 53 & 54 Geo III. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed 13 June 1816. Pages 5 to 9, 17, 33, 43, 44, 72, 76 to 98, and 115.