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[PARKER, Matthew]
The life off the 70. Archbishop off Canterbury presentlye sittinge Englished/and to be added to the 69. lately sett forth in Latin.
[Zurich: ?C. Froschauer], 1574.
£2950.00
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FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo. A (table) - E8, F3 (lacking final blank). Black letter, marginalia in Italic. Typographic folding table, two manuscript corrections of the text as usual. The large folding table, here in fine condition, is often defective or missing. A little soiling to title, small marginal dampstains not affecting text, two leaves repaired at head, touching a few letters, marginal tear to table not touching text, upper margin cut close. A good copy in 19th-century morocco gilt by T. Aitken (neatly rebacked, a little rubbed). Cornelius Paine's autograph 1871 on fep, his armorial bookplate inside upper cover, ex dono of J. H. Firminger to verso of fly, early 20th-century stamp of Bibliotheca Puseiana, Oxford, below, and on title and final leaf. First and only edition in English of this rare unauthorised life of Parker, translated (probably by John Stubbs) from the anonymous Latin text of 'Historiola Collegii Corporis Christi', with the table. "'The true author of this life…was John Josselin. It is a very great rarity. The marginal notes were done by some Puritan. I have seen two or three other copies of this little book, but without the table prefixed to it'" (Hearne in Lowndes, p. 1777). Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was one of the primary architects of the Thirty-Nine Articles, as well as a notable collector of early English manuscripts as part of his effort to demonstrate that the English Church had been historically independent from Rome. He created one of the world's most important collections of ancient manuscripts, now at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. Josselin (or Joscelyn) was, like Parker, one of the earliest scholars of Anglo-Saxon. The marginal notes attack Parker's 'De antiquitate Britannicae ecclesiae & Privilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis, cum Archiepiscopis eiusdem 70', "'endeavouring thereby to bring an odium on the archbishop, and make him ridiculous for erecting his monument while he lived'" (Wood in Lowndes, ibid.). STC 19292a; Lowndes V, p. 1777.
L399
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