Magna Cartas, Bracton, and Domesday!

I was happy to host another visit from Professor Daniel R. Coquillette's Anglo-American Legal History class last week. The focus of this visit? Magna Cartas, Henry Bracton, and the Domesday Book! The volumes on display included a 1539 pocket edition of the Magna Carta printed by Robert Redman; a 1556 Magna Carta printed by Richard Tottel and purchased at auction several years ago; a beautiful 1632 Pulton's statutes, opened to the text of the Magna Carta; Roscoe Pound's personal copy of Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (London, Richard Tottel, 1569); and another edition of Bracton's great work with interesting provenance--a 1640 edition owned by Isaac Parker, the first faculty member at Harvard Law School. Our Alecto edition of the Great Domesday was displayed open to a page in the Devonshire section--students enjoyed the authentic silver penny from the reign of William the Conqueror that was inserted in the front cover when the book was published. As always, it was a pleasure to host Professor Coquillette's class!

Rare Book Room closes at 12:30pm today

The Rare Book Room will close at 12:30 due to a classroom visit. I am hosting the first visit of the semester from Professor Dan Coquillette's Anglo-American Legal History course--one of my favorite activities as curator. Today, we will look at the influence of Roman law on the development of the Anglo-American legal system. Students will be able to look at the Pisan Pandects (1583), a 1475 Justinian Codex, several editions of Justinian's Institutes, and a beautiful three volume Corpus Juris Civilis from 1559. The class exhibit will also feature some important canon law volumes, including Gratian's Decretum (1518) and an incunable Decretals of Gregory IX (1496). As always, I'm looking forward to the class visit and hope to have many more students engage with our collection in the future.

Zouche and RBR news

The Rare Book Room will be closed through Thursday, August 23, as I endeavor to mount a new exhibit featuring some of our international law materials. In the meantime, take a look at a new acquisition for the exhibit: a first edition of Richard Zouche's Iuris et Iudicii Fecialis, published in Oxford in 1650. Zouche is considered by some to be the first positivist in the field of international law, as custom and contemporary precedents are at the forefront of his writings. He did not coin the phrase "jus inter gentes" ("law among nations") but did popularize the term, which is seen by many as more apt than "jus gentium" ("law of nations"). The volume, in a contemporary calf binding, is bound with a second work by Zouche, his Specimen Quaestionum Juris Civilis, the only edition, published in 1653 and also at Oxford. The second work is an outline of a reading list on the civil law for students. We are very excited to add this Zouche volume to our collection and welcome you to come see it in the upcoming exhibit.

New acquisition: 1746-47 complaint against a black servant in Hatfield, Massachusetts

One of the main focuses of BC Law’s special collections involves documents created and used by working lawyers in colonial and early America. I recently purchased a complaint for our collection related to a 1746-1747 Hatfield case brought by one Ichabod Allis against a black servant (perhaps slave?) of a man named Seth Dwight. The defendant, referred to in the complaint as Medad Negro, is accused of burning down Allis's barn. Medad apparently confessed to the crime. On the back of the complaint, we can see that three witnesses, Elisha Allis (presumably the son of Ichabod, the complainant), David Belding, and Jonathan Bardwell, put up 10 pounds bond each to testify. That would have been quite a sum of money in 1747!
Israel Williams, the Justice of the Peace who wrote up the complaint, references Medad being jailed and bound over for trial in Springfield Superior Court. I'm investigating what happened in the aftermath of the complaint and will report back with any pertinent discoveries!
Images of the entire complaint, along with my transcription, will be posted on our Facebook page!

1819 partnership agreement

One of our recent acquisitions is an 1819 agreement of co-partnership between two Boston attorneys, William Thurston and John M. Fiske. It is a 4 page folio manuscript, in good condition, with quite legible handwriting. Reading between the lines, the agreement seems to indicate that Thurston was easing out of the lawyering business due to health or a natural interest in retiring, and Fiske was to relieve him of some of the everyday tasks of a law practice. A large portion of the agreement concerns who will receive what fees for which services. One of my favorite passages comes from the 6th Article of Thurston's obligations--he was to retain responsibility for the expenses of the office, including the cost of wood and candles. It really conjures up images of Bartleby the Scrivener!

The photo above is of the first page. Other images are available on our Facebook page!

A Recent Gift

We are excited to introduce this new gift from a long-time friend and benefactor, Professor Michael Hoeflich, the John H. & John M. Kane Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas Law School. Professor Hoeflich gifted the BC Law rare books program a lovely collection of Roman law books in 2009, and has now followed that gift with the donation of this 1616 Heidelberg edition of Fragmenta XII Tabularum by Iacobi Gothofredo. This important work represents Gothofredo's attempt at reconstructing the fragments of the Twelve Tables, the ancient Roman law that was carved into ivory tablets and publicly displayed in the Roman Forum. This rare volume contains plates with reconstructions of those tables.

Gothofredo (often referenced as Gothofredus or as Jacques Godefroy) was born in France in 1587 to a family of legal scholars and historians. In addition to this work, he also is responsible for an incredibly influential edition of the Codex Theodosianus, an important compilation of Roman law prepared under Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II in the 5th century.

Recent events

The last couple of weeks have been busy ones in the Rare Book Room. I was thrilled to host two classes--Mary Ann Neary's Bankruptcy Research Class and Karen Breda's Insurance Research class. For the bankruptcy students, we looked at several classic treatises, including William Cooke's A Compendious System of the Bankrupt Laws (London, 1785), a first edition. Several documents from our Brooker Collection were also on display, including letters from the Boston Overseers of the Poor to the overseers in other towns, asking for reimbursement for housing citizens of the other towns.

For the insurance research class, we looked at some classic insurance treatises, among them the first American edition of Samuel Marshall's Treatise on the Law of Insurance (Boston, 1805). From the Brooker manuscript collection, students viewed an 1803 marine insurance policy, insuring a ship and her cargo for $1700 on a journey from Connecticut to Puerto Rico and back.

On Wednesday, March 28, I was happy to have several law students join me in the Rare Book Room for a look at some of our treasures. We looked at our Book of Hours, a beautiful Ethiopian bible, a 1475 edition of Justinian's Codex, a 1539 Robert Redman Magna Carta, a 1569 Bracton, a 1639 edition of Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum (with the New Atlantis included in the back), the first edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, several law student notebooks from the early 1800s, and many others. Thanks to all of the students who participated!