During the fall of 1971, the Stanford Law Library reached another milestone in its growth when the 200,000th volume, Les Plees del Coron, was added to its collection. This book on the English criminal law during the sixteenth century was written by Sir William Stanford (variant spellings: Staunford, Stamford). Although his name does not appear in the volume, legal historians have established that he was the author. The Library of Congress catalog entry for this title is:

[Stanford, Sir William] 1509-1558.

Les plees del coron: diuisees in plusiours titles and common lieux. Per queux home plus redement and plenairement, trouera quelq; chose que it quira touchant lez ditz pleez composees Ian du grace. 1557. [London] in aedibus Richardi Tottelli [1557]. 4 p. 1., 198 numb. 1.

Further bibliographic information on this title has been compiled by Howard W. Sugarman, Acquisitions Librarian at the Stanford Law Library:

LES PLEES DEL CORON, 1557. 1st Edition

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THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK

Sir William Staunford (Stanford, or Stamford) was born in 1509 and died in 1558. He was educated at Oxford and Gray’s Inn; called to the Bar in 1536; made a serjeant-at-law in 1552; and a judge of the Common Pleas in 1554, shortly after which he was knighted…. He was a great and learned lawyer (Coke, 10 Rep., ppxxxii, xxxiii) and we owe to him not only PLEES DEL CORON, but also An Exposicion of the Kinge’s Prerogative collected from Fitzherbert’s Abridgement.

The PLEES DEL CORON, written in law French, is divided into three books. The first deals with the greater crimes; the second with jurisdiction, appeals, indictments, sanctuary, benefit of clergy, approvers, and peine forte et dure; the third with the different modes of trial, with judgment and with forfeiture. The author frankly admits his indebtedness to Bracton and Britton. His book has no pretensions to literary form. Great slabs are cut from the statutes or from Bracton and are dumped next to one another with a thin cement of explanation to connect them. Yet PLEES DEL CORON had a high reputation with the profession, and perhaps it owed this partly to Staunford’s personal influence, partly to its being the first attempt to give a connected account of our criminal law.”

WINFIELD, PERCY H. The Chief Sources of English Legal History Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press. 1925. p. 324

There is no book exclusively devoted to the criminal law in the medieval period. For our information upon this topic we must go to the Year Books, and use as our guide the printed Abridgements. In the sixteenth century there is one book exclusively devoted to this topic-Staunford’s PLEAS OF THE CROWN, which was published posthumously in 1560 [1557]. Staunford was made judge of the Common Pleas in 1554, and was a learned lawyer. He is said to have edited the earliest printed edition of Glanvil; and he made use of Bracton’s book which had not then been printed. The book is founded almost entirely upon Bracton and the Year Books.”

HOLDSWORTH, SIR WM. S. Sources and Literature of English Law Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1925. p. 125

THE PRINTER

“Tottel, Richard (d. 1594), publisher, was a citizen of London who set up in business as a stationer and printer in the reign of Edward VI. From 1553 until his death fortyone years later, he occupied a house and shop known as the Hand and Star, between the gates of the Temples in Fleet Street within Temple Bar. On 12 April 1553 he was granted a patent to print for seven years all ‘duly authorized books on common law’. In 1556 this patent was renewed for a further term of seven years. When the Stationers’ Company of London was created in 1557, Tottel was nominated a member in the charter [Arber, Stationers’ Registers, vol. i. ppxxvii-xxix). The company entered in the early pages of their register a note of his patent for law books (ib. i. 95). On 12 January 1559 the patent was granted anew to Tottel for life.”

Dictionary of National Biography, London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1964. v. XIX, p. 1001.

Although the adding of the 200,000th volume is indeed encouraging, the Stanford Law Library must still expand at a more rapid pace if it is to continue to support the teaching and research aspects of the Law School. The Law Library still ranks only 18th in size among law school libraries. The schools most comparable to Stanford all have substantially larger collections:

Harvard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,200,000

Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510,000

Yale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505,000

Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275,000

California-Berkeley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260,000

Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240,000

It is vital that the Law Library continue to receive support not only to maintain its present rate of growth but to strengthen further the depth of its collections.