William Lambard,
Archeion: or, a Treatise of the High Courts of Justice in England.
(Manuscript on paper, 206 pages, c. 1600.)

Lambard (1536-1601), a lawyer and antiquarian, was the leading legal treatise writer of his day. He was appointed under Elizabeth I as the keeper of the rolls, and keeper of the records in the Tower of London. His Archaionomia (1568), compiled with Laurence Nowell, was the first printed collection of Anglo-Saxon laws in Old English and included the first printed map of England.

Around 1591, Lambard completed his Archeion, the most useful treatise on courts and court procedure in Elizabethan England. It circulated among lawyers and students like many works did (and particularly law reports) – in handwritten copies painstakingly made from other manuscripts. Archeion was not printed until 1635, long after Lambard passed away, when it appeared in an “unauthorized” edition produced from a circulating copy like this one. The accuracy of the text was contested by Lambard’s grandson, who rushed another version of Archeion to print in the same year.

Manuscript variations are an enduring issue for scholars studying the history of English (and other) law, and can raise genuine questions of interpretation. This remarkable manuscript awaits a scholar to discover its (perhaps surprising) variations!