THE FIRST PART OF THE INSTITUTES OF LAWES OF ENGLAND Or, A Commentary Upon Littleton, not the name of a Lawyer onely, but of the Lawe it selfe
With: A Table To The First Part Of The Institute Of The Lawes Of England (1629).
 
Second edition. Folio (284 x 183mm). Bound in the original plain boards, with a parchment covered spine. A near fine copy, internally fresh. Some wear to the binding, with loss to the parchment covering the spine.
 
Frontispiece portrait, engraved title page, portrait of Littleton opposite the opening of the first book. Wanting the fold out plate.
 
PROVENANCE: From the library of John Seale (1705-1777) of Mount Boone, his ownership inscription to the front board. Occasional scholarly notes in the margins.
 
Second edition of "the first textbook on the modern common law... of the highest authority" (Walker, The Oxford Companion to Law).
 
"If Bracton first began the codification of the Common Law, it was Coke who completed it... In the Institutes,... the tradition of the common law from Bracton and Littleton... firmly established itself as the basis of the constitution of the Realm" (Printing and the Mind of Man).