MAGNA CARTA [Magna Charta] Imprinted at London by Richard Tottell, 1576

[MAGNA CARTA] Magna Charta, cum statutis, tum antiquis, tum recentibus, maximopere, animo tenendis, nunc demum ad vnum, tipis ædita, per Richardum Tottill. Anno domini. 1576. Cum Privilegio ad Imprimendum Solum.

Hardcover. Leather-bound. Reprint. Octavo (150 x 100mm), ff. [8], 247, [1]. Signatures: [par]⁸ A-Z⁸ Aa-Hh⁸. Imprint from colophon: "London in Fleetestreete within Temple barre at the signe of the Hand and Starre, by Richard Tottel, the 8 day of March, 1576". Later period-style full calf; four raised bands; morocco lettering-piece; blind rules; marbled endpapers; text Latin or Law French, then in English after fol.119; black letter; woodcut capitals and historiated initials; indexes; wide margins. Condition: VERY GOOD. Collated complete. Binding tight and secure. A little edge erosion to spine plate. Title leaf and succeeding leaf with neat professional edge repairs. Leaves very slightly browned and toned in places with occasional marginal stains. Very minor old underscoring and marginalia to approximately 18 pages. Old hand-inked title to fore edge. Rare.

Note: Magna Carta (1215) stands as one of the truly great historic legal documents of Britain and the western world, leading directly to the establishment of constitutional government. Famously, thanks to the English barons, a reluctant King John was forced to accept certain liberties of his subjects and restraint of his powers within the law. Although at first renounced, amended versions were confirmed and reconfirmed by later monarchs throughout the Medieval period. Magna Carta was first printed around 1508 by Richard Pynson, however it was his contemporary Richard Tottell who printed more editions of Magna Carta than any other 16th-century printer having been awarded a life grant by Elizabeth I to print law books. His first printing of an expanded Magna Carta came in 1556, it is regarded as 'the most known'; it varies from Pynson’s (and also Berthelet’s) printings in some readings of the text of the statutes, and it is enlarged by the addition of “certain statutes with other needful things taken out of old copies examined by the rolls,” printed at the end of the first part. Further editions by Tottell followed in 1576 and 1587.

The 1576 printing, with omissions and additions (the additions, selected through to the fourteenth regnal year of Elizabeth I), adds to and improves upon William Rastell's important collection, and includes the Charta de Foresta of Henry III, the Statutes of Merton and Marlebridge, the Statutes of Edward I and other statutes which are digested by topic specifically designed for practicing lawyers and judges, and includes English statutes in law French. Among the most notorious statutes are those of Edward concerning Jews, including the Edict of Expulsion (1290), which banished them from England. Other statutes relate to women, wills, forcible entry, "Fraudulent Deedes" and other topics. There is a new preface subsequently used in later editions. The title translates as: The Magna Carta edited with its laws in old and then recent form with especial care, then finally put together as one unit by Richard Tottill in the year 1576. [Beale S18; STC (2nd ed.), 9281; MMBR (1812) 336; Maxwell 350; ESTC S101094].