“ to be preserved, applications of the law to new cases by the courts began soon after to be reported in the Year books, these to be methodised and abridged by Fitzherbert, Broke, Rolle and others, individuals continued the business of reporting, particular treatises were written by able men, and all these, by the time of L ^d. Coke, had formed so large a mass of matter as to call for a new digest, to bring it within reasonable compass. this he undertook in his institutes, harmonising all the decisions and opinions which were reconcilable, and rejecting those not so. this work is executed with so much learning and judgment that I do not recollect that a single position in it has ever been judicially denied. and altho’ the work loses much of it’s value by it’s chaotic form, it may still be considered as the fundamental code of the English law . . . ”

On August 30 of the same year Jefferson sent to John Minor a copy of a letter to Bernard Moore, written “ near 50. years ago” in which he stated: “ . . . L ^d. Coke has given us the first view of the whole body of law worthy now of being studied . . . Coke’s Institutes are a perfect Digest of the Law as it stood in his day . . . ”

On February 26, 1821, to Dabney Terrell, who had requested advice on a course of law reading, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . 1. Begin with Coke’s 4. institutes. these give a compleat body of the law as it stood in the reign of the 1 ^st James, an epoch the more interesting to us, as we separated at that point from English legislation, and acknoledge no subsequent statutory alterations. ”

Sir Edward Coke, 1552-1634, English judge and law writer.

The first edition of the Second Part, which contains the text of various statutes from Magna Carta to the time of James I, was published in 1642.

Rough calf. Initialled at sig. I and T by Jefferson with a manuscript note by him on page 148. Other manuscript notes not by Jefferson.