PREFACE.

THE text of this work was first published about the year 1481, near 350 years ago, and the Commentary appeared about 150 years afterwards, or 200 years since. It has survived the policy of 16 kings and the attacks of as many generations; and notwithstanding the enactment of some hundreds of statutes, and the adjudication of several thousand critical questions, this admirable production has all along maintained, and still continues to enjoy, a reputation far exceeding that of any other legal publication. Some few, indeed, of its distant members exhibit symptoms of imbecility and decay, but the great body of the work remains sound and vigorous, and bears, even in the present day of reform, every feature of longevity and endurance. It contains, in fact, one main repository of the ancient common law of England, embodied by Littleton, commented on by Coke, and ripened by time into all the authority of an act of parliament,-which indeed it has viewed in the light of a law sanctioned by the common consent of

Prince and People. A code thus matured cannot easily be abolished; in truth, to abrogate it would be to demolish one main pillar of the state.

These remarks are merely introduced to shew the futility of the supposition, that the sitting commission of inquiry have devoted this venerable pile of learning to destruction. The object of that commission is emendation not subversion; and when we consider that principle is immutable, and that both the text of Littleton and the commentary of Coke are composed almost entirely of that sterling matériel, we may rest assured, from the history of this very work, that however involved the detail of the Law of Real Property may become, its principles will be found stored up in this celebrated compendium, which must remain as it has hitherto done, the foundation of all law on the subjects of real property and conveyancing.

The following pages were composed by two learned and eminent Judges, at the close of long and active lives, occupied almost exclusively in the acquisition of that knowledge which they have thus bequeathed to posterity. The text of Littleton is written without any reference to authorities; but the Commentary of Coke is supported by a host of quotations from Bracton, Britton, Fleta, Glanville, and the Year-books; so much so as to render a perusal of those text writers a matter of curiosity rather than of use. Law-books of the present

day are compiled by quite a different class of authors, and assume in consequence an essentially different cast of character. Many of them, it is true, contain excellent collections of the recently adjudged cases and statutes, but in few of them will be found the labour of general deduction or of condensed classification,-qualities in which, as also in ingenious exemplification, the present works abound.

This, then, being the nature of the works now for the hundredth time offered to the Public; the following, it is conceived, is, at the present day, the most convenient shape in which they can appear-that is without note or comment. The text and commentary — unique and intelligible in themselves have nevertheless been so overloaded with excellent though incongruous notes and references, that the formidable appearance, of the whole and the still more enormous price, have deterred many an aspiring tyro from entering on the perusal of so laboured a performance, -obstacles which it is hoped the present alluring edition will effectually remove,— and in which the student need fear the contraction of no erroneous notion, though his after-reading and experience will shew him many points of qualification.

The object of the present edition of Coke upon Littleton is to give the text of the work complete in its native excellence; omitting only such parts as have become entirely obsolete, and adding a few references to modern.

The

leading decisions and statutes where the text has been altogether altered or very materially modified. marginal reductions and a new and improved index are also additions.-The pleasing task of rearing upon this solid basis the superstructure of modern law is left to the industry and ingenuity of the student,—an employment which has made many an eminent and successful lawyer, and will doubtless make many more.

5, Lincoln's Inn,

29 March, 1830.