A Law Dictionary

£550 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

A later printing of this controversial English legal dictionary drawing on both common and civil law, first published in 1607 as The interpreter: or booke containing the signification of words . The compiler John Cowell (1554-1611) was Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge from 1594 to 1611, and master of Trinity Hall, the stronghold of civil law studies at Cambridge, from 1598 until 1611. 'The controversy arose from Cowell's definition of a few terms that reflected a theory of royal absolutism, which was at the time often associated with the civil law. Cowell defined a king as having absolute power above the law, with parliament serving the monarchy. The book caused an uproar in the parliament of 1610, which was marked by a general fear of royal absolutism. MPs complained that Cowell had drawn his arguments from the imperial laws of the Roman emperors... It also angered common lawyers, who objected to Cowell's defence of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. Sir Edward Coke, chief justice of the common pleas, who called Cowell 'Dr Cowheel', also resented his derogatory comments regarding Sir Thomas Littleton, whose work on tenures served as Coke's main authority for the first volume of his Institutes. The protests caused James I to summon Cowell before him in the privy council and suppress the book by proclamation, claiming that it was "in some points very derogatory to the supreme power of this crowne; in other cases mistaking t

• Binding: Hardcover

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