BACON, Francis, Viscount St Alban. A Collection of Some Principal Rules and Maximes of the Common Lawes of England... (SECOND EDITION - 1636)

AUTHOR: BACON, Francis, Viscount St Alban

TITLE: A Collection of Some Principal Rules and Maximes of the Common Lawes of England, With Their Latitude and Extent: Explicated for the more facile Introduction of such as are studiously addicted to that nobel Profession.

PUBLISHER: London: by J. More, 1636.

DESCRIPTION: SECOND EDITION. 1 vol, small 8vo, (ix)94pp, 7-1/8" x 5-1/2", early paper wrappers. Housed in a green morocco slipcase.

REFERENCE: STC 1135

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Second edition of one of the earliest, if not the first, of maxims of the English Law (Rees 1: 20). CBEL 1: 870. We have here but twenty-five out of three hundred Rules which [Bacon] had collected: 'I thought good, before I brought them all into form, to publish some few, that by the taste of other men's opinion...I might receive either approbation in my own course, or better advice for the altering of others which remain. ' The excellence of that which we possess makes us grieve that we have so small a proportion of that which the author designed: 'Though some great masters of the Law did outgo him in bulk...yet in the science of the grounds, and mysteries of the Law, he was exceeded by none'--Preface to Blackstone's Anal. (Allibone, 90). None of Bacon's legal works were published before his death in 1626; the first edition of this work (often bound with "The Use of Law", probably not by Bacon) appeared in 1630. A very good copy of this cornerstone of English Law.