The Newe Boke of Justices of Peace

contemporary English gilt-stamped calf

An early edition in English of this practical manual for use by Justices of the Peace compiled by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert (1470-1538), one of the best-known legal writers of the sixteenth century and a justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1522 until his death.

The New Boke was originally published in Law French under the title Loffice et auctoryte des iustyces de peas in 1538 in conscious imitation of the earlier, but less thorough, anonymous treatise, the Boke of Justices of Peas. Together, these two works are hailed as the first printed treatises on English criminal law, and were the only printed works to offer practical guidance, from the form of pleadings to powers of arrest, to the individuals appointed to the office of Justice of the Peace in the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century.

Fitzherbert's manual remained in use until it was overtaken by Dalton and Coke in the seventeenth century. There were eight reprints between 1540 and 1566, and an enlarged edition by Richard Crompton in law French (1583) which was itself reprinted five times.

'The latest year-books, and the reports of Dyer and Spelman, show that Fitzherbert's judicial opinions were held in high regard by his contemporaries, though he took a strict view of precedent and did not always agree with more purposive interpretations of the law. In 1535 he famously denied the authority of an innovative king's bench decision of 1520 that an action on the case would lie against executors to recover the simple debts of their testator, a decision won by his own advocacy when a serjeant, with the outburst, "Put that case out of your books, for it is not law without doubt'" (Baker and Milsom, 448). He also held that actions on the case could not be used for spiritual defamation, such as an accusation of heresy, and he is known to have rejected several other recent developments which departed from older precedents' (ODNB).

With distinguished provenance firstly for the Crawley-Boevey baronets of Highgrove in Gloucestershire, and secondly for the merchant banker Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham (1819-1907). A keen bibliophile, Aldenham amassed a substantial library at his house in Hertfordshire, as well as editing works for the Early English Text Society and the Roxburghe Club.

All early editions of this work are scarce. ESTC records only 13 examples of the present 1566 edition in institutional collections worldwide, 6in the British Isles (BL, Corpus Christi, Cambridge, Glasgow University Library, Worcester College, Oxford, Bodleian Library, St. Andrews University, and Ushaw College, Durham) and 6 in North America (2 at Harvard Law Library, Huntington Library, Library of Congress, University of Minnesota, and Yale).

10th(?) printing; 8vo (14 x 9.5 cm); text in English, ruled in red throughout, bookplate and ownership inscriptions in pen and pencil to front pastedown, further inscriptions to title, final f. adhered to rear pastedown, slight dampstaining to title, old worm damage to for-edge of first 3ff, a little toning towards rear; contemporary English gilt-ruled calf, oval centrepiece of arabesque design in gilt to both covers, double gilt fillet borders, floral cornerpieces, spine in 5 banded compartments each tooled in gilt with 5-headed flower design, remains of ties, a little rubbed, overall a very well preserved, near fine example; 173, [3]ff.

ESTC S102232; STC 10977; Beale T343; Putnam 12.