Edmund Plowdem by T. Stayner, line engraving – image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery
Les commentaries, ou reportes de Edmunde Plowden vn apprentice de le comen ley, de diuers cases esteants matters en ley, & de les arguments sur yceux, en les temps des raygnes le roye Edwarde le size, le roigne Mary, le roy & roigne Phillip & Mary, & le roigne Elizabeth Ouesque vn table perfect des choses notables contenus en ycell, nouelment compose per VVilliam Fletevvoode recorder de Loundres, & iammes cy deuaunt imprime. Auxy vous aues in cest impression plusors bone notes en le mergent per tout le lyeur, en queux les cases sont referre al Abridgement de Brooke, & les lyeurs del termes, & as auters lyeurs del comen ley, queux notes sont imprimes en vn greinder letter, q[ue] les notes escries per Master Plowden le reporter mesme, a le fine que chescun poet sacher, queux notes le reporter ad escrye, & queux sont addes per auter de puisne temps.
1571 English Short Title Catalogue record
1578 English Short Title Catalogue record
Edmund Plowden (c.1518—1585) was a practising lawyer and law reporter. In the early 1550s he started to record cases, possibly to aid law students. Tottel first printed Plowden’s Commentaries in 1571 and then again in 1578 in an expanded second edition. They were so successful that they continued to be reprinted throughout the 17th century. These reports introduced an entirely new style of law reporting which was radically different from the Year Books. Plowden described his methods as:
“[to] be present at, and to give diligent attention to, the debates and questions of law, and particularly to the arguments of those who were men of the greatest note and reputation for learning. The second was, to commit to writing what I heard, and the judgment thereupon, which seemed to me to be much better than to rely on treacherous memory.”
In the past only pleadings and arguments had been recorded; Plowden’s reports concentrated on special verdicts that dealt with problematic points of law . As a volume of law reports, it was the first collection of reports published by an author in his own lifetime and under his own name. Before publication he consulted with the judges and the lawyers who had been involved in the case.
The copy picture above is the 1578 edition held by the Royal Courts of Justice Library.
Within the text there are marginal standardised citations to Brooke (Br.) and Fitzherbert (Fitz.) and the Year Books which Tottel has included.
This copy of a later sixteenth century edition (1599) of Plowden’s Commentaries from the Royal Courts of Justice Library has an engraving of Plowden’s Monument from the North wall of Temple Church dated 1794 pasted opposite the title-page. The engraving comes from John Thomas Smith’s Antiquities of London which was published between 1791 and 1800 and contains engravings of buildings, monuments and statues in London.
Richard Tottel 