Le Liver des Assises & Plees del Corone, Moves & Dependantz

Book Description

1561. [Yearbook]. [Edward III]. [Rastell, John, Editor]. Le Liver des Assises & Plees del Corone, Moves & Dependantz Devaunt les Iusticez Sybien en Lour Circuitz Come Aylours, En Tempz le Roy Edwarde le [T]ierce, Iadis Roy Dengleterre, Ouesque un Table dez Principall Matters del Pleez del Corone. London: in Aedibus Richardi Totteli, 1561. [iv], cccxxvi ff. Folio (11-1/4" x 7-3/4"). Recent period-style quarter calf over cloth, raised bands and lettering piece to spine, endpapers renewed. Title page printed within handsome woodcut architectural border, woodcut decorated initials. Some toning, light browning to a few leaves, tiny wormholes in a few places. Light soiling to title page and verso of final leaf, minor edgewear to preliminaries and final few leaves. Ex-library. "3277" in early hand to head of title page, stamp to verso and verso of final leaf. An attractive copy. * Later edition, one of two issued by Tottell in 1561. A selection of reports for 1-50 Edward III (1327-1377), the Book of Assizes, is one of the most important of the Year Books and of unique value to the study of English legal history. As Stanley Milsom has observed, it is the "only collection of reports from the country," that is the only collection of reports from the justices on assize (circuit) rather than in the central courts at Westminster. It is therefore "rich in apparent curiosities" because "it reports processes we do not otherwise see, on circuit, before juries." The first edition was printed in 1514 by John Rastell. OCLC locates 5 copies of the 1561 edition (both issues) in North American law libraries (Columbia, Harvard, NY Law Institute, University of Pennsylvania, York University). Milsom, Historical Foundation of the Common Law (2nd. Ed., 1981) 299, 55. English Short-Title Catalogue S126326. Beale, Bibliography of Early English Law Books R50.

Not sure what some of these terms mean? Look it up in our glossary.