Works
Rastell's best-known work is The Pastyme of People, the Chronydes of dyvers Realmys and most specially of the Realme of England (1529), a chronicle dealing with English history from the earliest times to the reign of Richard III, edited by Thomas Frognall Dibdin in 1811. His Expositiones terminorum legum Angliae (in French, translated into English, 1527; reprinted 1629, 1636, 1641, &c., as Les Termes de la Ley), and The Abbreviacion of Statutis (1519), of which fifteen editions appeared before 1625, are the best known of his legal works.
Rastell was also the author of a morality play, A new Interlude and a Mery of the Elements, written about 1519, which is no doubt the "large and ingenious comedy" attributed to him by Wood. The unique copy in the British Museum is incomplete, and contains neither the date nor the name of the author, identified with John Rastell on the authority of John Bale, who catalogues Natura Naturata among his works, adding a Latin version of the first line of the piece. This interlude was printed in William Carew Hazlitt's edition of Dodsley's Old English Plays, by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps for the Percy Soc. (Early English Poetry, vol. 22, 1848), and by Julius Fischer. See also an article by Henry R. Plomer, who unearthed in the Record Office an account of a lawsuit (1534–35) in connection with Rastell's premises at the "Mermaid". For the books issued from his press see a catalogue by Robert Proctor, in Handlists of English Printers (Bibliographical Soc., 1896).
He was also the first English printer of polyphonic music, which he began issuing in the 1520s. The practice of printing music from a single impression i.e. using pieces of type that print staves, notes and text together, was apparently first practiced by Rastell in London about 1520. Two different broadside songsheets printed by him survive, dated to about 1523; two survivals of ephemeral unbound works from such an early date suggest that he may have printed a considerable amount of music. The texts are in English, suggesting they were for the local market, not export. After his death, the musical type were acquired by John Gough.
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