[310]. R. Wendover, III. 302-318.
[311]. This date is given by Bémont, Chartes, lxxi., but Robert Watt in his Bibliotheca Britannica, Thomson, Magna Charta, 450, and Lowndes, Bibliographer’s Manual, 1449, all give the date of the earliest edition as 1514. Bémont, lxxi., and Thomson, 450–460, Watt, and Lowndes furnish details of the various editions of Pynson, Redman, Berthelet, Tottel, Marshe, and Wight, from 1499 to 1618. All of these are now superseded by the Statutes of the Realm, published by the Record Commission in 1810.
[312]. The substance of this admirable edition, now unhappily scarce, has been reproduced in the same author’s Tracts (1762).
[313]. See The Mirror of Justices (edited for the Selden Society by Prof. Maitland), Introd., xxiii. to xxiv.
[314]. Ibid., xxxvii. Cf. xlviii.
[315]. See Dictionary of National Biography, XI. 243.
[316]. Introduction, p. ii.
[317]. See p. 375 of the work cited.
[318]. See Const. Hist., I. 572, and cf. Select Charters, 296.
[319]. One of the most brilliant members of that school, Mr. Prothero, whose power of rendering difficult subjects both lucid and interesting would specially have qualified him for the task of explaining Magna Carta, declines the task partly upon the ground that it would be impossible "to throw any new light on a subject exhausted by the ablest writers."—S. de Montfort, p. 14.