William Rastell
judge books
WILLIAM RASTELL (C. 1508-1565), printer and judge, son of the above, was born in London about 1508. At the age of seventeen he went to the university of Oxford, (1531), a reprint of the edition published by his father in was granted on 27th October 1558. One of his pre-decessors, John Boteler, had also been printer and judge. Rastell continued on the bench until 1562, when he retired to Louvain without the queen's licence. By virtue of a special commission issued by the bazons of the Exchequer on the occasion an inventory of his goods and chattels was taken. It furnishes an excellent idea of the modest nature of the law library (consisting of twenty-four works) and of the chambers of an Elizabethan judge (see Law Magazine, February 1844). He died at Louvain on 27th August 1565. |
It is difficult to distinguish between the books written by him and those by his father. The following are believed to be his: A Colleccion of all the Statutes (1557), A Table collected of the Yeares of the Kynges of Englancle (1561), both frequently reprinted with con-tinuations, and A Colleccion of Entrees, of Declaracions, &c. (1566), also frequently reprinted. The entries are not of Rastell's own drawing, but have been selected from printed and MS. collections ; their "pointed brevity and precision' are commended by Story. He supplied tables or indexes to several law books, and edited La novel natura brevium de Monsieur Anton. Fitzherberb and The Workes of Sir T. More in the English Tonge (1557). He is also stated to have written a life of Sir T. More, but it has not come down to US.
See Bale, Scriptores maiords Brytatozim, 1557-59 ; Pits, Relationes hist. de rebus Angl., 1819 ; Tanner, Bibliotheca, 1748; Ames, Typogr. Antig., by Dibdin,1816, iii. pp. 81, 370; Wood, Athense Oxonienses, 1813, i. pp. 100, 343 ; Dodd, Church History,1739, it. p...149; Foss, Biographia Jurldica,1870; Reeves, History of the Engl. Law, 1889, p. 432 ; Marvin, Legal Bibliography, 1847 ; Clarke, Biblio-theca Legunt, 1819; Bridgman, Legal Bibliography, 1807; Catalogue of Books in the British Museum before 1640, 1884.
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