17. Year books (Edward IV : 1461-1470): De termino Michaelis anno primo Eduardi Quarti.

This page is from a volume of twenty “year books” covering the reign of Edward IV. It was published between 1571 and 1572, nearly a century after Edward’s death in 1483. In the upper corner of the first leaf of the text, a former owner recorded the price he paid for the book on “29 Jannarii anno de 1587 regni Eliza. 30”—or 1588 in the modern calendar. Written throughout the volume in the same careful hand are marginal notes and many citations. Perhaps most interestingly, below the colophon at the end of each year book the annotator added, in Latin, the dates on which he read the year books, from 31 January 1587 [i.e. 1588] to 23 May 1588. Shown here is the last page of 4 Edward IV, which the owner read on the first of March 1587 [i.e. 1588] in the 30th year of Elizabeth’s reign. English year books themselves were a form of note-taking intended to guide lawyers in future court cases. First devised around 1300, year books consisted of notes on points of debate and pleading in court cases. They continued to be produced into the 16th century, after which they were replaced by other kinds of reports. Year books were first printed in the early 1480s by William Machlinia. Later, the prolific 16th-century London printer Richard Tottell produced over 200 editions of year books, including reprints and compilations.