Bracton de legibus

Bracton online
De legibus et consuetudinibus angliae
Puffendorf

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Henry Bracton. De legibus & consuetudinibus Angliæ libri quinque in varios tractatus distincti, ad diversorum et vetustissimorum codicum collationem, ingenti cura, nunc primū typis vulgati quorum quid cuiq; insit, proxima pagina demonstrabit. London: apud Richardum Tottelum, 1569.
Written in Latin. Contemporary blind-tooled calf. 29 cm x 21 cm.

Henry de Bracton (also Bratton, d. 1268) is traditionally credited with the work known variously as Bracton or, more formally,On the Laws and Customs of England. Little is known about his early life, but it is thought that he began his legal career no later than the 1230s. By 1238 he was serving as clerk to Justice William de Raleigh. When Raleigh moved on, Bracton was hired by the king. He received his first judicial appointment as justice on eyre (itinerant justice) for Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. He served as a justice on a number of minor courts, mainly in south-west England, until his death.

This title, long associated with his name, is no longer thought to have been his work, but rather more probably t

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Henry of Bratton (Henricus de Brattona or Bractona) was an English judge of the court known as coram rege (later King’s Bench) from 1247–50 and again from 1253–57. After his retirement in 1257, he continued to serve on judicial commissions. He was also a clergyman, holding various benefices, the last of which being the chancellorship of Exeter cathedral, where he was buried in 1268.

Bracton’s chief claim to fame is his association with the long treatise De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (“On the Laws and Customs of England”), which F. W. Maitland described as “the crown and flower of English jurisprudence.” The work (now commonly known simply as Bracton) attempts to describe rationally the whole of English law, a task that was not again undertaken until Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England in the eighteenth century. The work is remarkable both for its wealth of detail and for its attempts to make sense out of English law largely in terms of the ius commune, the combination of Roman and canon law tha

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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bracton, Henry de

BRACTON, BRATTON, or BRETTON, HENRY de (d. 1268), ecclesiastic and judge, was author of a comprehensive treatise on the law of England. Three places have been conjecturally assigned as the birthplace of this distinguished jurist, viz. Bratton Clovelly, near Okehampton in Devonshire, Bratton Fleming, near Barnstaple in the same county, and Bratton Court, near Minehead in Somersetshire. The pretensions of Bratton Clovelly seem to rest entirely upon the fact that anciently it was known as Bracton. Sir Travers Twiss, in his edition of Bracton's great work, 'De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ,' inclines in favour of Bratton Fleming on the ground that one Odo de Bratton was perpetual vicar of the church there in 1212 (Rot. Lit. Pat. i. 93 b), when the rectory was conferred on William de Ralegh, a justice itinerant, whose roll, with that of Martin de Pateshull, Bracton is known to have had in his possession almost certainly for the purposes of his work. Bracton cites Ralegh's decisions less frequently i