De Legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae Libri quinq; in varios tractatus distincti, ad diversorum et vetustissimorum codicum collationem, ingenti cura, nunc primu typis vulgati: quorum quid cuiq; infit, proxima pagina demonstabit. �

London: Richard Tottell. (apud Richardum Tottellum). 1569. First edition. 4to. 290x195mm. [16], 172, 175-444 leaves. (leaf 439, misnumbered 437). Pagination is as called for by ESTC, collates complete. Imprimatur at foot of title page, "Cum privilegio". Early 17th century full legal calf, blind ruled to covers. Raised bands to spine, author's name in manuscript on second compartment. Foot of the spine has some worm holes and wear with loss. Some rubbing and scuffing to covers. Internally excellent. Slight waterstaining and worm holes to the head of the gutters and worming to the lower right corner of last forty leaves. Tear to corner of leaf 3C4 with no loss of text, and a clean tear to leaf 3G4 covering the last ten lines of text but there is no loss of text. Contemporary ink annotations to initial blank and head of title page. Ownership inscription (scored through but clearly legible) to head of title page: "Daniel Dun, prec (i.e. price) xi.6". An excellent copy with an important provenance of the work which surveyed and defined the English common law for the first time. Described by F.W Maitland as "the crown and flower of English jurisprudence", De Legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae ("On the Laws and Customs of England") by Henry of Bratton (whence Bracton) represents, remarkably, given its great length and the detail and density of the text, only part of the originally conceived work designed to explain and analyse (with all authorities fully cited and, in some instances, entire cases transcribed) the whole of the common law. Despite this, Bracton (the work is often referred to simply by the name of lawyer and priest generally accepted as the final editor and reviser of the manuscript) is about ten times longer than the only previous English legal treatise by de Glanville (see previous item). Bracton, although enormously important in the development of an English precedent-based approach to the resolution of legal disputes, draws also "on Roman law for some of the more abstract organizing principles of the treatise". This use of continental civil law by Bracton neatly encapsulates the essential difference between English and Roman law, the latter operating in the empyrean of a priori jurisprudential theory, the former grounded solidly in the everyday, making its decisions by reference only to what has gone before. One hesitates to mention it but this difference in legal thinking identified in the thirteenth century resonates in the biggest question facing England and its relationship with the rest of Europe in the twenty first century. In his great work, Bracton admonishes those he describes as "foolish and insufficiently instructed, who climb the seat of judgment before learning the laws". Daniel Dun, whose copy this was, would, one thinks, have escaped Bracton's ire. It is not hard to see how De Legibus might have influenced Dun, a man of profound intellectual gifts and great practical skill as a lawyer and politician. Following the Reformation, England was moving in new directions, religiously, politically and socially. It was, in many ways, starting afresh as a nation although its newness owed much (in that very English way) to a reassertion and rediscovery of tradition. That De Legibus should have been printed for the first time in 1569 demonstrates the desire of contemporary English lawyers to encourage the study of a specifically English legal system. Elizabethan and Jacobean England was something of a golden age for jurisprudence, an age that witnessed the beginnings of the modern English legal system. Daniel Dun's ownership of De Legibus helps form a picture of where the most senior lawyers saw the roots of that system. Born in 1544, elected a fellow of All Souls in 1567 and awarded his DCL in 1580, Dun (also Donne) was one of the leading ecclesiastical lawyers of the late sixteenth century. Dun held important legal posts in five dioceses including Winchester and Canterbury where he was Dean of the Arches for twenty years until his death in 1617. As well as his career in church law, Dun also presided over cases of commercial and maritime law including piracy and fishing disputes: English seamen at the time were overly keen on attacking French ships and fishing in Danish waters. Dun clearly resolved the problems to the benefit of the English as, by 1609, he was president of the High Court of Admiralty, having been knighted in 1603. He was also MP for Taunton (in the 1601 parliament) and one of the first two MPs for Oxford University in 1604. Although the handwriting marking Daniel Dun's ownership of the Bracton and the Saint German is different in each book (they came to us from separate sources), we are confident that both copies were owned by Dun. It is quite likely that the inscriptions were made by different people (perhaps one by Dun himself and the other by a secretary or clerk) or perhaps Dun himself used a different handwriting style at various times. Either way, it is highly improbable that there were two men at this time called Daniel Dun each buying and reading (in Latin) complex, learned books on the law. PMM. 89. STC 3475