[SELDEN, John, editor.] FORTESCUE, Sir John.

De laudibus legum Angliæ written by Sir John Fortescue L. ch. justice, and after L. chancellor to K. Henry VI. Hereto are joind the two summes of Sir Ralph de Hengham L. ch. justice to K. Edward I commonly calld Hengham magna, and Hengham parva. Never before publisht. Note both on Fortescue and Hengham are added.

London, the Company of Stationers, 1616. Small 8vo (145 x 90 mm), ff. [8], 132, [3], pp. 56, [12], [1]–35, 34–159, [3, blank]; first leaf (blank save for signature mark).’; inked-out inscription on title; contemporary speckled calf, fore-edge titled in ink ‘Laus legu Angliæ. Fortescue’; joints very slightly cracked, but an excellent copy, from the library of Sir Thomas Clarke (1703/4–1764, master of the rolls 1754: see Oxford DNB), the first leaf with his ownership inscription and annotation (‘This edition was publish’d by Mr Selden . . . ’), bequeathed to the third earl of Macclesfield. First publication of Selden’s edition. ‘Although earlier editions and translations of this key treatise already existed in print, Selden employed the humanist technique of collating several manuscripts to prepare his Latin text and added an Elizabethan English translation and copious notes, mostly in English. In other words, this fifteenth-century treatise received the respect normally accorded to the classics. The notes brought portions of Fortescue’s interpretation more closely in line with recent scholarship, but also worked to subvert both the concept of immemorial custom argued by [Sir John] Davies and the anachronistic historical interpretations displayed by [Sir Edward] Coke . . . . The notes to Selden’s edition . . . included a number of important insights into the nature of jurisprudence and some significant contributions to his historical view of the English constitution . . . . Most crucial of all, the encounter with Fortescue – within a freshly acquired Continental context – coaxed from Selden a brilliant account of the nature of law which both converted all law into a polity with its own rationalized customs and revealed the first glimpses of a new theory of natural human rights’ (Christianson, Discourse on history, law, and governance in the public career of John Selden pp. 56–63).In his notes to De laudibus legum Angliae, Selden ‘faced more squarely than most common lawyers the legal consequences of the Roman conquest of Britain, noting that native Britons not only “affected, we see, Roman language, rhetorique, Roman habit, Roman pleasures, diet, and the like” but “were not backward in affecting those laws, for which the languages and rhetorique was most usefull” (notes, 11–12). The normal adjustments of time combined with the succeeding conquests of the Saxons, Danes, and Normans to alter both the society and its laws: “As succeeding ages, so new nations (comming in by a conquest . . . ) bring alwaies some alteration” (ibid., 9). This combination of continuity and change deliberately deconstructed Fortescue’s seamless web of law, stretching unbroken from the Britons to his own day, into a suitable series of historical events, marked by such collections as the laws of King Cnut, King Edward, and King William. Within this new historical interpretation, the Norman conquest now seemed like just one more conquest that kept old customs and added new ones – not an unobtrusive or a catastrophic event. Selden’s notes to De laudibus also articulated a new vision of the English “state” as grounded in a particular limitation of the laws of nature made at the foundation of the organized society that succeeded Roman rule. The common law of England began when “naturall laws [were] limited for the conveniencie of civill societie here”. Thereafter those limitations “have been . . . increased, altered, interpreted”, and became like “the ship, that by often mending had no piece of the first materialls”, but “yet (by the civill law) is to be accounted the same still” (notes, 19). This provided a historical model for interpreting the laws of any independent jurisdiction. From the ancient past to the present, societies changed individual laws within the context of an ongoing distribution of powers made at their foundation, but as new laws helped each society to adjust to ever-changing needs, the shape of the “state” remained the same. In England, this was a mixed monarchy in which the king, nobility, clergy, and freemen had always shared in lawmaking by custom and statute’ (Christianson, in Oxford DNB).STC 11197; Sweet & Maxwell I p. 17 (24).

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• nº de pedido: T2418

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)