"THE GREATEST OF LAW BOOKS": COKE'S COMMENTARY, 1775 FOLIO EDITION, A FOUNDING INFLUENCE ON BRITISH CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES
COKE, Edward. The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England; or, a Commentary upon Littleton. London: G. Kearsly… and G. Robinson, 1775. Large folio (10 by 15 inches), contemporary full reverse calf sympathetically rebacked, retaining original red morocco spine label, raised bands. $2200.
Later folio edition of Coke's First Institutes, among the greatest of British legal texts and a fundamental influence on America's founding fathers and American revolutionary principles—the first to be edited and revised by Francis Hargrave, praised by Maitland for its notes. With folding table, in contemporary calf covers.
"What Shakespeare has been to literature, what Bacon has been to philosophy, what the translators of the authorized version of the Bible have been to religion, Coke has been to the public and private law of England" (Reams, Some Makers of English Law, 132). Edward Coke devoted "years in compiling the works which have secured his immortality… In the Institutes… the tradition of the common law from Bracton and Littleton, whose name Coke's Commentarie—the first part of the Institutes—made famous, firmly established itself as the basis of the constitution of the realm" (PMM 126). "The First Institute… was the only part of the Institutes published in the author's lifetime… [With this work] Coke determined the course of the development of our modern law" (Reams, 141-47). When the Mayflower landed in North America in 1620, Coke's writings were aboard and ultimately laid the foundation for all legal training in the colonies. "Before the Revolution, Coke's Littleton was, as Jefferson reminded Madison…'the universal elementary textbook of law students'" (Randall, Thomas Jefferson, 52-3). Jefferson later wrote that Coke's Institutes "may still be considered as the fundamental code of the English law" (Sowerby II:1781). First published in 1628. "Thirteenth Edition" stated on title page. See Harvard Library Catalogue I: 411-12; Sweet & Maxwell I:449. Owner ink signatures to title page.
Light staining and repair wormtrace to outer margin of title page and first few leaves only, text generally quite clean; expert restoration to corners, faint dampstaining to front board. A nicely rebacked, wide-margined folio.