Le Court Leete, Et Court Baron, Collect per Iohn Kitchin de Graies..

1607. An Important Contribution to the Development of Modern Legal Theory Kitchin, John [c.1520-c.1590]. Le Court Leete et Court Baron Collect per Iohn Kitchin de Graies Inne un Apprentice in Ley. Et les Cases & Matters Necessaries pur Seneschals de Ceux Courts a Scier, & Pur les Students de les Measons del Chauncerie. Ore Novelment Imprimee, & Per le Author Mesme Corrigee, Ouesque Divers Novel Additions, Come Court de Marshalsey, Auncient Demesne, Court de Pipowders, Essoines, Imparlance, View, Actions, Contracts, Pleadings, Maintenance, & Divers Auter Matters. London: Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1607. [xii], 289, [3] ff. Octavo (6-1/4" x 4-1/4"). Contemporary calf, rebacked in period style, blind rules to boards, small gilt initials (I S) to centers of boards, raised bands to spine. Light rubbing and a few minor stains to boards, illegible faint markings to front board in small early hand, moderate rubbing to extremities, corners bumped and moderately worn, pastedowns loose and lightly edgewear, clean tear to rear pastedown, recent armorial bookplate (Gerald Chippindale Rivington) to verso of front board. Light toning to interior, light soiling to title page. $600. * Later edition. By outlining the differences between the previously undivided court, Kitchin, along with Coke, helped lay the foundations of modern legal theory. "In fact Kitchin was doing on a small scale what Coke was doing on a grand scale. Both were representatives of that school of literate Elizabethan lawyers...whose great and enduring work was the adaptation of medieval law and institutions to modern needs. Imagination necessarily played some part in this process of adaptation; and thus they are responsible not only for the enunciation of the rules of modern law, but also for legal and historical theories, the soundness of which was considered by many generations of lawyers and historians to be as incontestable as their statements of law" (Holdsworth). The first edition was published in 1579. Our edition includes the anonymous Retorna Brevium, a treatise on writs originally published in 1538 Holdsworth, A History of English Law IV:130. English Short-Title Catalogue S108073.