HENSHALL'S STUDY OF MEDIAEVAL KENT 1798

Specimens and parts; containing a history of the county of Kent, and a dissertation on the laws from the reign of Edward the Confessor, to Edward the First; of a topographical, commercial, civil, and nautical History of South Britain...By Samuel Henshall.

London, for the Author by R Faulder and F & C Rivington, 1798.

Quarto, pp xxx [i.e. xxxiv], 104, 41, [1], double page engraved map of the county [a little foxed], tables in text, uncut in early cloth backed marbled boards, front free endpaper laid down, a little rubbed and worn at corners, but a sound clean copy.

   

FIRST EDITION; these historical collections were followed the following year with the first part only of Henshall's never completed translation of Domesday. PRICE: £120.00   

 

 

CRAUFORD'S HISTORY OF THE ESTES WRITTEN FOR MARY OF ESTE 1681

The History of the House of Este, From the time of Forrestus until the Death of Alphonsus the last Duke of Ferrara. ...Wherein likewise the most considerable Revolutions of Italy from the year 452. to the year 1598. are briefly touched.

London, J M for Rich. Chiswell, 1681.

8vo, pp [30, including the errata leaf], 291, engraved portrait frontispiece, bound in contemporary calf, spine with raised bands, slightly later label, upper board detached, else a fine crisp copy throughout.

 

FIRST EDITION; an anonymous work attributed to James Crauford. As Leibnitz was to discover later, when commissioned to write his Hanoverian history, some aspects of the mediaeval history of the Estes were closely guarded secrets; this piece of work was almost certainly commissioned, or at least patronised, by its dedicatee Mary of Este, Duchess of Albany, and wife of James, Duke of York, and whose fine portrait by White is given as a frontispiece to the volume. James had already converted to Catholicism when he married Mary of Modena in 1673, but upon her arrival in England she was regarded with great suspicion by the English Protestants; James, now hugely unpopular, was appointed Commissioner of Scotland in 1680 following the Popish Plot scare, and this work may in part be seen as a Scottish tribute to the by now virtually exiled couple.

Price £125.00