Britton
by John le Breton
Attributed to John le Breton or Britton (d. 1275), but largely based on the practical parts on "De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae" (1250-1260) by Henry de Bracton with the addition of such statutes and legal changes as were necessary to bring Bracton's law up to date. [1] . The origins of Britton may be traced to a project of Edward I to produce a digest of the English law in the spirit of Justinian's Institutes. Britton's book was the oldest English law book in the French language and was first published in 1540. [2]
John le Breton, justice and bishop of Hereford, was chosen bishop from among the canons of Hereford in January 1269 and was consecrated on 2 June of that year. On his death in 1275 certain chronicles describe him as an ‘expert in English laws, who had written a book about them called le Bretoun’. The bishop could not in fact have written Britton in the version in which it has survived, because this third full-scale treatise on English law to survive (along with Bracton and Fleta) from the thirteenth century refers to statutes made up to fifteen years after his death, and the question is why he should have been credited with its authorship. John Selden argued in the seventeenth century that the bishop had been confused with the contemporary judge Henry of Bracton, the supposed author of the great treatise De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, of which the untitled Britton might be regarded as a condensation. Selden observed that the words attributing the book to John le Breton do not appear in most of the annals recording the bishop's death, and believed that they were a much later interpolation ‘by some smatterer’ in those few manuscripts of the Flores historiarum in which they do appear. [3]
Bibliographic Information
Author: John le Breton
Title: Britton
Published: London: Printed by the assignes of John Moore Esquire, 1640.
Edition:
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
Bound in full antique calf, rebacked with original backstrip laid on, raised bands to spine, gilt lettered red morocco label. Purchased from Roger Middleton Fine and Rare Books.
References
- ↑ Sweet and Mazwell, I, page 38-39
- ↑ ESTC S106709
- ↑ Alan Harding, ‘Breton , John le (d. 1275)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 6 June 2013
