In This Booke is Contayned the Offyces of Shyriffes, Bayliffes...
Rare Variant Printing of an Early Work on Sheriffs [Fitzherbert, Sir Anthony (1470-1538)]. In This Booke is Contayned the Offyces of Shyriffes, Bayliffes of Lybertyes, Escheatours, Constables, And Coroners, And Sheweth What Everye One of Them May Dooe by Vertue of Their Offices, Drawen Out of Bookes of the Common Lawe and of the Statutes. [Imprynted at London: by Thomas Marshe, 1579?]. [112] pp. Octavo (5-1/4" x 3"). Later period-style calf, black-stamped rules to boards, black-stamped tooling across joints, raised bands and lettering piece to spine, blind inside dentelles, endleaves renewed, edges rouged. Light rubbing to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities, corners just bumped, front hinge cracked, faint offsetting to endleaves, later bookseller description and bookplate (of Donald C. Bain) tipped onto front pastedown, later notes laid in. Moderate toning to interior, light soiling to first and final few leaves, light edgewear and (illegible) early ownership signatures and notes to title page, clean tears to leaf C3 and C5 mended crudely with cellotape on verso, text affected without loss, faint dampstaining to margins of last several leaves, lower right corners of last 8 leaves lacking and worn, just touching a few catchwords without loss to main text, small hole to text block of last 4 leaves with minor loss to legibility on p. [109] only. Rare. $5,500. * One of at least five issues printed by Marshe. An extract from Fitzherbert's JP manual Loffice et Auctoryte des Justyces de Peas (first edition 1538) translated into English from the original Law French, this was one of the earliest treatises to discuss the offices of sheriff, coroner and other local officials. The provisional date is assigned by the ESTC based on a dated ownership signature in the extant copy; the later bookseller record tipped into our copy suggests a date of 1537 based on the date of the last ruling quoted. Our copy has variant spellings in the title ("sheweth" for "shewed" and "dooe" for "doe") compared to the ESTC record, but an identical collation formula and colophon. All headlines in our copy are in black letter and not Roman type. OCLC and the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) locate 1 copy of this issue worldwide (Library of Congress) and no copies of our variant printing. See ESTC S4009. Not.
Price: $5,500.00
Book number 74273