La Graunde Abridgement, Collecte & Escrie per le Iudge Tresreverend..

1586. [London]: In Aedibus Richardi Tottelli, 1586.. [London]: In Aedibus Richardi Tottelli, 1586. Preferred Edition of "An Excellent Repertory or Table for the Year Books" Brooke, Sir Robert [?-1558]. La Graunde Abridgement, Collecte & Escrie per le Iudge Tresreverend Syr Robert Brooke Chivaler, Nadgairs Chiefe Iustice del Common Banke. [London]: In Aedibus Richardi Tottelli, 1586. [And] La Secounde Part du Graunde Abridgement.... [London]: In Aedibus Richardi Tottelli, 1586. [iv], 351; [i], 2-328 ff. Collates complete. Two parts in one. Small folio (11" x 7-1/2"). Recent period-style quarter calf over marbled boards, raised bands and lettering piece to spine, endpapers renewed. A few nicks to spine, light rubbing to corners. Titles printed within handsome woodcut architectural borders. Moderate toning to text, faint dampstaining and dampspotting in a few places, some edgewear and crinkling to preliminaries and endleaves, crude repair to lower corner of F. 141 of Part I with no loss to text, small early owner signatures to title page of first part, another to F. 351 of Part I and F. 328 of Part II, early markings to a few passages in text, a few early annotations to rear endleaves. A handsome copy. $1,000. * Third edition. Sir Robert Brooke was renowned for his great learning and probity as a judge. His Abridgement is based on Fitzherbert's Abridgement, but it contains much new material. In all, Brooke abridged nearly 21,000 cases and digested them alphabetically under 404 headings. It abridges fully the Year Books of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Brooke proceeded with great care and accuracy, and is believed to have had access to the original records of the Year Books. Coke calls the Abridgement "a worthy and painful work and an excellent repertory or table for the Year Books of the Law." This edition is superior to earlier printings, in which abbreviations are frequently unintelligible. A fair number of important early American lawyers had copies of this title, and it remained a reference into the nineteenth century. Thomas Jefferson, to cite one example, had a copy of the present edition. Coke cited in Marvin, Legal Bibliography 151-52. Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson 1777. Beale, Bibliography of Early English Law Books R473, R476.