Angleterre

1736 · réf. 69477 — 1736. Bristol: Sold by Felix Farley 1736. Quarto. Bristol: Sold by Felix Farley 1736. Quarto. Bristol's Municipal Constitution in Practice: Charters and Jurisdictional Boundaries 1736 Bristol England. Bristol. The City Charters. Containing the Original Institution of Mayors Recorders Sheriffs Town-Clerks And All Other Officers Whatsoever. As also of a Common-Council And the Ancient Laws and Customs of the City. Diligently Compar'd with And Corrected According to the Latin Originals. To which are Added The Bounds of the City By Land With the Exact Distances from Stone to Stone All Round the City. Bristol: Sold by Felix Farley 1736. Quarto 9-1/2" x 7-1/2". 297 15 pp. Engraved copperplate frontispiece. Final advertisement leaf. Occasional minor pagination errors text complete. Contemporary paneled calf rebacked in period style lettering piece and gilt-ruled raised bands. Boards rubbed edges worn corners bumped. Light toning a few leaves darker occasional marginal foxing minor worming to margins in a few gatherings not affecting text. Early ownership signature of Marmaduke Coules to recto of frontispiece. $350. First and only edition. A substantial and uncommon provincial imprint this work presents the civic charters and constitutional framework of Bristol carefully rendered from the Latin originals and supplemented with detailed descriptions of the city's jurisdictional limits. Of particular interest is the appended perambulation of the boundaries reflecting the mid-1730s survey of the city's extent with the limits fixed by reference to some 103 boundary stones-74 on the Gloucestershire side and 29 on the Somersetshire side-each described with notable topographical specificity. One example reads: "Stone 1. On the bank of the River of Avon near a limekiln on the East and a sluice on the West call'd Woodwell's-Lake standeth the first stone." An important record of municipal governance and urban geography in eighteenth-century England combining legal transcription with practical surveying data. The early owner Marmaduke Coules is plausibly identifiable with the mid-eighteenth-century Warden of the Ancient Society of St. Stephen's Ringers a long-established Bristol civic and religious fraternity associated with St. Stephen's Church A. B. Beaven Bristol Lists: Municipal and Miscellaneous 1899 p. 336. OCLC locates three copies in U.S. law libraries Harvard Uni. unknown