''Britton'' is the earliest summary of the

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

of England in the French tongue, which purports to have been written by command of King Edward I. The origin and authorship of the work have been much disputed. It has been attributed to John le Breton,

bishop of Hereford The Bishop of Hereford is the Ordinary (officer), ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Hereford in the Province of Canterbury. Until 1534, the Diocese of Hereford was in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church and two of its bishop ...

, on the authority of a passage found in some manuscripts of the history of Matthew of Westminster; there are difficulties, however, involved in this theory, inasmuch as the bishop of Hereford died in 1275, whereas allusions are made in ''Britton'' to several statutes passed after that time, and more particularly to the well-known statute ''

Quia emptores is a statute passed by the Parliament of England in 1290 during the reign of Edward I of England, Edward I that prevented Tenement (law), tenants from Alienation (property law), alienating (transferring) their lands to others by subinfeudati ...

'', which was passed in 1290. It was the opinion of

John Selden John Selden (16 December 1584 – 30 November 1654) was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned m ...

that the book derived its title from

Henry de Bracton Henry of Bracton (c. 1210 – c. 1268), also known as Henry de Bracton, Henricus Bracton, Henry Bratton, and Henry Bretton, was an English cleric and jurist. He is famous now for his writings on law, particularly ''De legibus et consuetudinib ...

, the last of the chief justiciaries, whose name is sometimes spelled in the

fine rolls The Fine rolls are a collection of financial records maintained by the English Chancery in the Middle Ages. Originating in the reign of King Henry III of England (1216–72), a fine represented a willingness to pay the crown a sum of money in excha ...

"Bratton" and "Bretton", and that it was a royal abridgment of Bracton's great work on the customs and laws of England, with the addition of certain subsequent statutes. The arrangement, however, of the two works is different, and but a small proportion of Bracton's work is incorporated in ''Britton''. The work is entitled in an early manuscript of the 14th century, which was once in the possession of Selden, and is now in the

Cambridge University Library Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of over 100 libraries Libraries of the University of Cambridge, within the university. The library is a major scholarly resource for me ...

, ''Summa de legibus Anglie que vocatur Bretone''; and it is described as "a book called Bretoun" in the will of

Andrew Horn Andrew Horn (–1328) was a fishmonger of Bridge Street, London, lawyer and legal scholar. Biography He served as Chamberlain of London, Chamberlain of the City of London from 1320 until his death in 1328. Sir William Blackstone's ''Commentarie ...

, the learned chamberlain of the

City of London The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...

, who bequeathed it to the chamber of the

Guildhall A guildhall, also known as a guild hall or guild house, is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Europe, with many surviving today in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commo ...

in 1329, together with another book called '' Mirroir des Justices''. ''Britton'' was first printed in London by Robert Redman, without a date, probably about the year 1530. Another edition of it was printed in 1640, corrected by

Edmund Wingate Edmund Wingate (1596–1656) was an English mathematical and legal writer, one of the first to publish in the 1620s on the principle of the slide rule, and later the author of some popular expository works. He was also a Member of Parliament d ...

. A third edition of it, edited and provided with a

parallel Parallel may refer to: Mathematics * Parallel (geometry), two lines in the Euclidean plane which never intersect * Parallel (operator), mathematical operation named after the composition of electrical resistance in parallel circuits Science a ...

English translation by Francis Morgan Nichols, was published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in two volumes in 1865. An English translation without the French text was published by Robert Kelham in 1762.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Britton (law)
English translation of ''Britton''
courtesy of the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

Legal treatises Medieval English law Works of unknown authorship