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[COSIN, Richard].
An apologie for sundrie proceedings by iurisdiction ecclesiastical, of late times by some challenged, and also diversely by them impuned.
London, the Deputies of Christopher Barker, 1593.
£2750.00
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4to. 3 parts in 1. pp. [xxx] 130 [x] 140 [ii] [iv] 255 [i]. Roman letter, woodcut initials and ornaments. A little occasional marginal age discolouration, a few small creases. A very good, clean copy in a particularly fine contemporary Oxford binding, possibly by Dominique Pinart, of blindtooled calf, covers with Renaissance-motif roll tooled borders [Oldham MW.a (1) and FP.g (9)], flyleaves from a black letter Latin dictionary. A few textual wormholes to lower cover, upper joint a little cracked at head, lacking ties. Extensive contemporary notes on flys and blank portions of first title in two or possibly three hands, occasional marginalia, 19th-c armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield inside upper cover, their armorial blindstamp to title and next two leaves. The second - greatly expanded - edition of Cosin's "learned and excellent work" (Lowndes), the first (1591) having been printed in only 40 copies. Cosin (c. 1549 - 1597), was an ecclesiastical lawyer on the Court of High Commission, and Vicar General of the Province of Canterbury. Here, he defends the authority of the ecclesiastical courts, explains and justifies their procedures and refutes attacks on the 'ex officio' oath defendants were required to swear, which was used in the repression of Puritanism. This oath required the examinee to answer faithfully any question he might be asked. It had been widely criticised as being redolent of the methods of the Inquisition, and it was in response to the leading Puritan lawyer, James Morice's, attack on its lawfulness in his 'Brief treatise of Oathes' that Cosin wrote the present reply. Cosin was an important figure in discreditating the Puritan movement, which had gained strength under the lenient tenure of Edmund Grindal as Archbishop of Canterbury and which his successor, John Whitgift, tried to suppress. The work closes with Lancelot Andrews' tour de force oration on oaths given at the Divinity School in Cambridge in July 1591, in an erudite mixture of Latin, Hebrew and Greek.
Dominique Pinart was a French binder working in Oxford from the early 1580s (see Mirjam Foot's The Decorated Bindings in the Marsh's Library, p. 23). The present binding is not only attractive and well-preserved, it is also unsophisticated and carries strong, clear and largely still sharp impressions of its Renaissance tooling.
STC 5821; Lowndes II, p. 529; Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age, 381.
L547
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