 |
[WILKINSON, Robert].
The Merchant Royall. A sermon preached at White-hall before the Kings Maiestie, at the nuptials of the Right Honourable the Lord Hay and his Lady, upon the Twelfe day last being January 6. 1607.
London: Felix Kyngston for John Flasket, 1607.
£550.00
|
|
FIRST EDITION. 4to. Roman letter. pp. [vi] 39. Large woodcut of a galleon under sail on tp., woodcut initials and headpieces. Narrow repaired wormtrail, mainly interlinear, in final two gatherings but affecting a few letters, final leaf remargined at fore-edge, and repaired at inner lower margin, light age yellowing, else a good copy, retaining at gutter the holes for its original pamphlet-stitch binding, in 19th-century half morocco, marbled boards, spine titled in gilt, head and foot and corners a little rubbed. 19th-century bibliographical note on fly. Probably the earliest edition (STC) of the four that appeared in 1607 (there was also an Edinburgh edition in the same year - Aldis), of Wilkinson's sermon on marriage delivered at the wedding of James Hay, first Earl of Carlisle, in 1607. Hay married Honora (or Honoria) Denny, daughter of Sir Edward Denny, a marriage arranged by the King himself, who had taken to Hay as a particular favourite, and who is lauded both in this work and in Campion's 'Masque' as "the founder of a marriage in which not only two persons, but two kingdoms, were united" (DNB).
In his sermon, Wilkinson draws an extended analogy between the ideal of a virtuous woman and wife and a ship, starting off, "She is like a Merchants ship, she bringeth her foode from a farre". The sermon had some impact in early-16th century English love poetry. Wilkinson was a Church of England divine, and Cambridge D.D. Incidentally the work contains much information on maritime practice at the beginning of the age of discovery.
STC 25658; Lowndes VII, p. 2924; this ed. not in Goldsmith's, or Kress. Uncommon - RLG records only one copy of this edition (Huntingdon).
L459
|
|
|