An Exposition Of Certaine Difficult And Obscure Words, And Termes Of The Lawes Of This Realme: Newly Set Foorth & Augmented, Both in French and English, ... to Attaine the Knowledge of the Same

Rastell, John. An Exposition of Certaine Difficult and Obscure Words, and Termes of the Lawes of this Realme, Newly Set Foorth & Augmented, Both in French and English, for the Helpe of such Yonge Studentes as are Desirous to Attaine the Knowledge of the Same. Whereunto are also Added the Olde Tenures. [London]: Richard Tottell, [1579]. 196 leaves.

Reprint available 2003 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 2002042760. ISBN 1-58477-328-6. Cloth. $80. The first edition of Rastell's law dictionary precedes in point of time the publication of the first general English dictionary, and is the most important English dictionary before Cowell's controversial Interpreter (1607).

Rastell [d.1536] was a successful lawyer and printer. He published his dictionary around 1523 with the title Expositiones Terminorum Legum Anglorum. (Later editions are titled Termes de la Ley or An Exposition of Certaine Difficult and Obscure Words). Immediately successful, it went through at least twenty-nine editions, the last appearing in 1819.

Hicks praised its value and described it as useful for its insights into the state of the common law at the close of the year-book period. This early edition is especially significant because it was printed by Richard Totell [fl. 1553-1594]. Totell was an important London printer who owned the patent for many common law books.

Hicks, Materials and Methods of Legal Research 246. H. Graham, "Rastell and the Printed English Law Book of the Renaissance," Law Library Journal 47 (1954):6, 20. Dictionary of National Biography XVI: 746-747.