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first edition thus, woodcut initials and ornaments, lower outer blank corner of title slightly finger-soiled, uniform very light age yellowing, A1 expertly repaired at blank gutter (minimally adhering to A2), very minor bleeding from yellow edge paint in places, just heavier to extreme lower outer blank corner of few gatherings, very small loss (flaw?) to a couple of outer edges, Book II of 2 only (issued and sold separately, as usual), ff. [297], Black letter, with Roman, 2 cancelled as usual, small 4to, contemporary English (probably London) calf, printer's waste used as spine lining, double blind ruled, blind-stamped oval centrepiece with interlacing ribbons to covers, raised bands, all edges painted yellow, lacking ties and upper endband, extremities slightly rubbed, very minor loss to upper outer corners, lower edge and head of spine, upper joint split at head and foot, author, title and subject inked to fore-edge in a contemporary hand, ms. accounts (dated 1642) to fly. A very good, clean copy, in a contemporary English binding, of the scarce first revised edition of Book II of this most influential Tudor legal manual. This was 'the first printed systematic treatise [in England] on the writing of legal instruments, including not only precedents in conveyancing but also of indictments and proceedings in chancery [.] drawing upon civilian and continental scholarship' (ODNB). First printed as 'Symbolaiographia' in 1590, the work was quickly revised in 2 books, mostly issued and sold separately. Book I discussed the rudiments of legal theory; Book II focused on precedents and legal formulae they are, effectively, two independent, self-standing works. This manual was 'the principal conveyancer until the civil war' (Erickson, p.23). All 1590s printings are scarce; of each early revised edition (1592), only half a dozen copies or less are recorded. William West (fl.1568-94), of whom little is known, produced this manual for the gentry residing in rural areas, who needed to carry out legal transactions, acting as their own lawyers. In Elizabethan England, 'it became popular for gentry families to send their sons to the Inns of Court for a year or two, not to make them lawyers but to make them conversant in the law' (Jones, p.41). Prefaced by a copious index, Book II discusses, among others, acquittances, arbitraments, sales, bills, obligations, certificates, copies of court rolls, exchanges, gifts, grants, feoffments, trusts, indentures, leases, mortgages and warrants of attorney. For each, it provides standard formulae in English and Latin for a myriad of specific circumstances (e.g., warrants to elect a bishop, for a deer, to arrest a fugitive servant, or licenses for a crossbow, to brew and to keep a wine tavern). In 1642, this copy was probably in the library of a landowning gentleman, who jotted down expenses including money for the saddler and for a cartwheel. In an exquisite, unsophisticated, strictly contemporary binding. The blind-stamped oval centrepiece, in fine impression, was in use c.1591. The construction of endleaves ('conjugate plain paper pastedowns and flyleaves, with small stubs of printed waste beneath') and the absence of edge hatching suggests it is a London production (Pearson, 'Oxford Bookbinding', p.85). The stubs of printed waste come from a contemporary edition of the English translation of the Geneva Bible. Only Harvard copy recorded in the US; none in the UK. ESTC S4108; Beale T500b. N.L. Jones, Governing by Virtue (2015); A.L. Erickson, Women and Property (2002).
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