Magna Carta

Magna Charta, cum statutis qua antiqua vocantur, iam recens excusa, & summa fide emendata, iuxta vetusta exemplaria ad Parliamenti rotulos examinata: quibus accesserunt nonnulla nunc primum typis edita. [London:] Richard Tottel, 1556

2 parts in one volume, 8vo (133 x 89 mm). Woodcut initials, text in black letter, section title for second part with separate register and foliation; lightly washed and pressed. Nineteenth-century ꧅blind-ruled calf over beveled boards, Dutch combed marbled endpapers, edges stained carmine red; rebacked, retaining original spine.

First Tottel edition. "Magna Carta was a charter written by Englishmen, but the logical development of its ideas and their implementation has been left to Americans. Many of the legal injustices highlighted in the American Declaration of Independence echo specific provisions of Magna Carta … Magna Carta also served as the keystone of the Constitution and Bill of Rights … [A]lmost two centuries before the Continental Congress declared the United States independent from Great Britain, Magna Carta was already sowing the seeds of personal and political liberty in England's North American colonies (Sotheby's New York, The Magna Carta, 18 December 2007, p. 82).

"The Declaration of Independence—predicated on the principle that governments derive 'their just powers from the consent of the governed'—largely comprises a list of accepted articles of Magna Carta that had been violated by George III, including 'imposing Taxes on us without our Consent'; 'depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury'; 'quartering large bodies of armed troops among us'; and 'taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.' And the Declaration, like Magna Carta, was🍸 issued as a public pronouncement 🦋…

"Thomas Jefferson (who must have had Magna Carta in mind as he drafted the Declaration of Independence) and Alexander Hamilton both cited Magna Carta in support of the United States Constitution. Indeed, under the communal pen-name 'Publius,' Hamilton specifically referred to Magna Carta in number 84 of The Federalist Papers" (Sotheby's New York, The Magna Carta, 18 December 2007, p. 85).

REFERENCE:

ESTC S101069; Beale S15; STC 9277.5

PROVENANCE:

New York City Bar Association Library