Les Reports de Edward Coke L’attorney generall le Roigne

Bound in contemporary speckled calf ruled in blind. The spine in seven compartments with six raised bands ruled in blind. Boards with wear, corners split. Joints split but cords remaining intact, occasional browning.  Retains contemporary endpapers.

Per Wikipedia: Les Reports

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)

“His Law Reports, known as Coke’s Reports, were an archive of judgments from cases he had attended, in which he had participated or about which he had been informed. They started with notes he made as a law student in the winter of 1572, with full reporting of cases from October 1579. The Reports were initially written down in seven notebooks, four of which are lost; the first notebook contains not only law reports, but also a draft version of Coke’s first Institutes of the Lawes of England.

Coke began reporting cases in the traditional manner, by copying out and repeating cases found in earlier law reports, such as those of Edmund Plowden. After being called to the Bar in 1578 he began attending court cases at Westminster Hall, and soon drew the attention of court officials – many early reports have notes that he was told “by old Plowden” or “by Wray CJ”. The original reports were kept in a generally chronological order, interspersed with personal memos, obituaries and notes on court practices. They are not entirely chronological; during his career, Coke took note of earlier cases which had drawn his attention. These were written down with the plea roll reference and the year in which Coke recorded them, but later editions failed to include the plea roll reference and led to inaccuracies.

The Reports have gained significant academic acclaim; writing in the Cornell Law Quarterly, Theodore Plucknett describes them as works of “incomparable richness” with a “profound influence upon the literature, and indeed the substance, of English law”. John Baker has described them as “perhaps the single most influential series of named reports”, and even Francis Bacon, Coke’s rival, wrote in praise of them, saying “Had it not been for Sir Edward Coke’s Reports (which though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extrajudicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good decisions and rulings over of cases), for the law by this time had been almost like a ship without ballast; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time”.

Although loaned to friends and family, and therefore in slight public circulation, Coke’s Reports were never formally used during his lifetime. Select cases were published in 1600, containing the most famous of his decisions and pleadings, while a second volume in 1602 was more chronological in nature. The third part, published in the same year, was also chronological, while the fourth, published in 1604, was arranged by subject. The fifth part, published in 1605, is arranged similarly, as is the sixth, published in 1607. Five more volumes were published until 1615, but Coke died before he could publish a single bound copy. No trace has been found of the draft manuscript.

Some academics have questioned the accuracy of the Reports. Coke’s famous Case of Proclamations, and his speech there, was first brought into the public consciousness through its inclusion in Volume 12 of his Reports, and Roland G. Usher, writing in the English Historical Review, notes that “Certain manuscripts at Hatfield House and elsewhere seem to throw some doubt upon this famous account of a famous interview”. One of the reasons given for possible inaccuracies in the later volumes of the Reports is that they were published posthumously. In July 1634, officials acting on order of the King had seized Coke’s papers, but a 1641 motion in the House of Commons restored the extant papers to Coke’s eldest son. The twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the reports were based on fragments of notes several decades old, not on Coke’s original manuscript.”

It makes sense that the 1635-6 Edition of the first four parts were published to take advantage of the demand caused due to the death of Coke and the King’s actions the year before.