A Rare Book's Roll-Call of Dishonest, Immoral, and Unusual People

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1813, James Caulfield published a new, expanded, three-volume edition of his  Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution, containing 109 engraved plates and 292 pages of accompanying text,  finishing the work originally issued in two volumes 1794-1795 with sixty plates and 214 pages of biographical material.

Caulfield's purpose was to embellish with prints the "twelfth class" section found in James Granger's Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, consisting of Characters dispersed in different Classes (2 vols., 1769), the "twelfth class" being those ‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’

It is, in short, an illustrated rogue's gallery of the odd, the dubious, the notorious, the eccentric, and the disreputable including:

Mother Damnable, the epitome of ugliness and the cursing, scolding, fuming, fire-flinging shrew not to confused with Mother Louse;

 

Blash De Manfre, the human Trevi Fountain commonly called the Water Spouter, who earned fame for drinking water in large quantities and regurgitating it as various sorts of wine, simple waters, beer, oil, and milk;

Elynour Rummin, the famous Ale-Wife of England, with "nose some deal hooked, and curiously crooked, never stopping but ever dropping; her skin loose and slacke, grain'd like a sacke, with a crooked back," but whose ale was renowned as A-1;

Margaret Vergh Gryifith, who had a six-inch horn protruding from her forehead;

Mrs. Mary Davis, who one-upped Margaret Vergh Gryifith with two horns growing on her head that would shed and grow again;

Francis Battaglia, alas not known as "Frankie Batts," who would devour half a peck of stones within 24-hours and six days later excrete them as sand through a colon with true grit;

John Clavell, the gentleman highwayman who wrote elegant poetry that begged mercy from judges, nobles,  and King, and was the author of A Recantation of an ill-led Life: Or, a discovery of the Highway Law (1627);

Archibald "Archie" Armstrong, the sharp-tongued master of buffoonery while jester to James I and Charles I, who earned renown and fortune as a Jacobean wise-acre, retired and became a loan-shark, and wrote A Banquet of Jeasts. Or Change of cheare: Being a collection of moderne jests. Witty ieeres. Pleasant taunts. Merry tales (1630);

Ann Turner, "a gentlewoman that from her youth had been given over to a loose kind of life, of low stature, fair visage, for outward behavior comely, but in prodigality and excess riotous," and was executed for murder;  

 Innocent Nat Witt, a poor, harmless idiot;

Moll Cut-Purse, "a woman of a masculine spirit and make [who] practised or was instrumental to almost every crime and frolick;"

Roger Crab, the sack-cloth wearing vegan hermit;

Mary Aubrey, who murdered her abusive husband then chopped him to pieces and cast him thither and yon;

Robert Fielding, gambler, bigamist, suspected murderer, and the vainest of all fops; 

Augustine Barbara Venbek, aka Barbara Urselin, whose "whole body and even her face was covered with curled hair of yellow color and very soft like wool";

Mary Carleton, who used more aliases than any knave in the Kingdom, was married three times, robbed and cheated several people, was often taken to be a German princess or at least a woman of quality, and was tried for bigamy and acquitted;

Mull'd-Sack, b. John Cottington, the genius pickpocket and miscreant who, one night while drunk, accidentally married an hermaphrodite named Aniseed-Water Robin (credited with twice impregnating himself and giving birth to a boy and a girl) in Fleet prison, "the common place for joining all rogues and whores together"; and many more.

James Caulfield (1764–1826) was an author and printseller. "Many old English portrait prints were too rare and valuable to supply the extraordinarily large demand for them. To this end, many old plates were republished and many old prints were copied. Caulfield came to specialize in prints illustrating Granger's twelfth class of people—‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’—whose portraits were very often the hardest to come by. In 1788 he began his work Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons, a series of reproductions of old portrait paintings and copies of rare old or popular prints accompanied by letterpress biographies" (Oxford DNB).

(In a bibliographical aside, Granger's book made fashionable the practice of extra-illustrating historical or topological books, i.e. pasting in illustrations from other sources, which became known as "grangerizing" existing texts).

In 1819 Caulfield further extended his book to include Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the end of the Reign of George II.

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CAULFIELD, James. Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution. Collected From the Most Authentic Accounts Extant. A New Edition, Completing the Twelfth Class of Granger's Biographical History of England; With Many Additional Rare Portraits. London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1813.

New edition, expanded and completing the original two volumes 1794-95. Three tall octavo volumes (10 x 5 7/8 in; 254 x 149 mm). viii, 104; [2], [105]-198; [2], [201]-292 pp. 109 engraved plates (one folding), including engravings based upon the drawings of Marcellus Laroon (1653-1702). Publisher's original blue paper covered boards with white printed spine labels

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Women are Children: Don't Let Them Vote

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The Militant" by G.T. (?), c. 1910-1912.

This political cartoon, in ink and watercolor, was likely inspired by and in sympathy with the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League (1908-1918) which opposed granting women the vote in Parliamentary elections within the United Kingdom.

The same sort of battle against women's suffrage was occurring simultaneously in the United States, ongoing since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 proclaimed voting rights for women.

Here, a little girl is arrested by two bemused policemen. She's in tears holding a can of oil, the prime suspect of arson to the house ablaze at right in the background.  On the house's fence the girl has chalked the demand, "Voats fer Wimmen."

The message is clear: English domestic life is threatened by immature women demanding the vote. Militants are particularly irresponsible and dangerous; the whole of society will go up in flames if women stuff the ballot box with their foolishness. A more condescending view of the issue is difficult to imagine. It was not, however, unusual. Casting women suffragettes as little children was a standard weapon in the anti-suffragette arsenal.

In the United States, a similar anti-suffragette theme was expressed at the very same time by Ten Little Suffragettes, a scarce eleven-page comic based upon the folk-song, Ten Little Indians. Ten little girls in pinafores carry protest signs supporting women's suffrage but are undone by their pre-pubescent behavior until only one remains and, petulant, she breaks her doll's head.

That women are children and incapable of making informed decisions about things they care about is a sentiment that remains amongst many to this day. Why should adults cede power to emotionally labile kids?

Particularly female children who are now increasingly dominating college enrollment, often out-earning their husbands and boyfriends, and are members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet.

Next thing you know, there'll be a female President of the United States. Somehow, the United States will survive - though a segment of the male voting population may feel their manhood whither and retract into their gut to disappear with their last vestige of superiority in everything except, perhaps, the ability to fix a toaster - a skill that many men have yet to master, this writer included whose grand philosophy regarding broken small household appliances boils down to, Buy a new one.
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[ANTI-SUFFRAGETTE ORIGINAL CARTOON]. G.T. [?]. The Militant. [London?]: c. 1910-1912. 39 x 35 cm original ink and watercolor drawing.
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Image courtesy of John Drury Rare Books, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Ten Little, Nine Little, Eight Little Suffragettes...(And Then There Were None).
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My Kingdom for a Hoax

by Alastair Johnston

Shakespeare's Richard the Third left us a few memorable phrases that have been delivered by everyone from Larry Olivier in a wig and mascara to Al Pacino in a backward baseball cap (but resisting the Brooklyn accent that would have made the king Richard da Turd), from Ian McKellen in jazz era Fascist drag to prize ham Richard Dreyfus in The Goodbye Girl, to Peter Cook in Black Adder. Richard the Third was even filmed thrice in the silent film era. Everyone knows, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"; the opening lines are also familiar:

Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds, that lowr'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean bury'd.

The opening of Richard the Third in the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623

In December 1960 my father was pleased to note a sign of literacy in Britain when a camping & sporting goods store ran an ad reading, "Now is the winter of our discount tents." But Shakespeare played fast and loose with the saga of this king, making him more of a Quentin Tarantino anti-hero than a real historical figure. He telescoped the action, making Richard's rise to the throne seem an overnight trajectory, though the time between Henry VI's murder (by his successor Edward IV) and funeral (1471), Clarence's imprisonment in the Tower (1477), to the Battle of Bosworth (1485), was fourteen years. 

The play was (probably) written and first performed in 1597. Shakespeare seems to have ignored published historical sources, but subsequently his version of the story has been taken as factual. The murder of Clarence (stabbed and drowned in a butt of malmsey) was pinned on Richard by the Lancastrians without much evidence. The princes in the Tower may have been killed by orders of Henry VII. Who knows? Did Prince Philip order the murder of Princess Diana for sleeping with Arab playboys?

Dr Johnson thought the play was overrated and Shakespeare "praised most, when praise is not most deserved; some parts are trifling, some shocking and some improbable."

Boydell's Shakspeare, 1803. Steevens' third edition, but a monumental work in English publishing. Printed by William Bulmer at the Shakspeare Printing-Office on Whatman paper and illustrated with numerous engravings. Reproduced from Peter Isaac's William Bulmer: the fine printer in context (London: Bain & Williams, 1993)

But George Steevens, Shakespeare's great editor, understood the secret of the play's success: it was an ideal role for actors like Burbage or Garrick because it showed a gamut of emotions from hero to lover, statesman to buffoon, from hypocrite to repenting sinner.

It was only a generation after Richard that Henry VIII sacked the monasteries in 1538. There was a free-for-all as the high-living priests were stripped of their accumulated wealth and luxuries, books, jewels and the like, while religious icons were smashed and destroyed, even graves were robbed. And the last Plantagenet King was forgotten — apart from a minor play. We know from Shakespeare that Richard's personal avatar was a boar.

The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
In your embowell'd bosoms...

Things took an odd turn in May 2010 when someone with a metal detector found a silver boar pin and decided they had found the true site of the battle of Bosworth Field. Some coincidence. Like walking in Giza and stubbing your toe on an ankh ornament inscribed KLPTR in hieroglyphics. Even more coincidental is the discovery of the site of Greyfriars under a parking lot in Leicester (after others had searched for centuries), ten days ago, and, in less than a week, archaeologists had dug a trench, found the garden of alderman Robert Herrick (not that Robert Herrick) which had been located on the site, and soon hit upon the exact spot where the King was wrapped in a shroud and buried humbly over 500 years ago. Perhaps the posthumous saga of Richard 3 is a bit too Hollywood to be believed.

Many people have wondered what happened to the king after his death at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry VII, not a pretty figure himself, didn't want him becoming sanctified, which might have happened if he had been returned to York and buried in the majestic minster there, so, after his naked corpse was paraded through Leicester (not as a warning to his followers, but to establish definitively his demise), he was turned over to some friars for a quiet interment. Bin Ladin disposal — burial at sea — wasn't thought of as an option.

York Minster (construction started in 627 C.E., still ongoing)

So the legendary King rises from the grave. It's better than Dracula! Today's news is that Richard wasn't a hunchback but had scoliosis — curvature of the spine — that made his right shoulder higher. He had an arrow in his back and an ax or sword blow to the skull that had finished him off. Maybe his last thought was "A hearse, a hearse! My kingdom for a hearse..." It's an incredible story, but could it be a hoax? We won't know until DNA tests are completed in a month or so, but it does seem as though they've found the ambitious duke who laid waste all rivals for the throne. If only the House of Windsor (né Battenberg) were so lively, instead of the sullen German upstarts they continue to be.

Shakespeare himself was almost lost to history, partly due to debased editions of his works but also perpetual copyright laws prevented their circulation. In 1680 one Crowne took Shakespeare's Henry VI, retitled the work The Miseries of Civil War, and claimed it as his own. Shakespeare's revival was due to Elizabethan scholar George Steevens, who restored the plays, and, since Steevens's re-edition, they have been continually performed and admired throughout the English-speaking world.

Steveens' edition, reprinted by Bensley in 1805, with a vignette after John Thurston, engraved by Charlton Nesbit: "Wisdom recovers from the grip of Time the laurels of which he had despoiled the tomb of Shakspeare."

Oddly, Steevens himself was involved in a hoax about another dead English monarch, the obscure Hardicanute. Steevens' dad was a director of the East India Company and young George had everything: "Every luxury was lavished on you — atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision." Well perhaps not as luxurious as Joe Orton's character — but he went to Eton and King's College, Cambridge. Then, with all the ease of a young gentleman born to a life of reading, dropped out of college. His life of privilege continued in a house on Hampstead Heath where he built a library of Elizabethan literature and collected Hogarths. He made daily rounds of the London bookshops and then came back to Hampstead to discuss his finds with his pal, Isaac Reed.

1803 stereotype edition of Steevens' Shakespeare, issued by Isaac Reed

In 1773 he produced his ten-volume Shakspeare. It was so good Dr Johnson deigned to add his name to the edition, though he didn't contribute much. But soon Edmond Malone and others muscled in on Steevens' turf so he turned his energies to subversion. While he was one of the first to expose the Chatterton-Rowley forgeries, and knew right off that William Henry Ireland's Shakespeare manuscripts were fakes, he also wrote a fictitious account of the Javanese upas tree, derived from the writing of an (imaginary) Dutch traveller (shades of Psalmanazaar). The Irelands' Shakespeare manuscripts had fooled a lot of people for a long time and certainly made an impact.

Reed published a new edition of Steevens' Shakespeare in 1785. At that point Steevens felt his authority had been usurped, so to reassert himself he created variorum editions, adding many valuable passages from Shakespeare's contemporaries to his notes.

Steevens last spectacular hoax was that of Hardicanute's tombstone. (A similar trick was pulled off in 1936 when members of the E Clampus Vitus fraternity conspired to plant the "Plate of Brasse" along the Northern California shoreline to give credibility to the notion that Francis Drake had anchored in Bolinas lagoon, or nearby, in his world tour of 1579. The perpetrators knew that Herbert Bolton, Director of the Bancroft Library at U C Berkeley, was desperately seeking the plate, so obliged him by planting a fake that was considered authentic for 40 years.)

Steevens's stunt was to get back at another Hogarth collector who had some early works that Steevens coveted, but who snubbed his advances for a trade. The Society of Antiquaries fell for the ruse, that a stone monument to King Hardaknut had been unearthed in the London suburb of Kennington, and the Gentleman's Magazine published this etching [above] of the inscription in Anglo-Saxon (concocted by Steevens). Son of King Canute, Hardy was another murderous monarch who eliminated rivals, taxed the bejesus out of his serfs, and when they objected, razed their cities. But right away someone noticed the etching technique of the inscription was modern, so the hoax didn't fly. 

Was Steevens malicious, or just a wry guy having fun at others' expense? I think the latter. And he had spent long hours poring over manuscripts and early printed books, reading "for my sake" and seeing "for my fake" over and over.

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A Leopard Gave Its Life For This Binding

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

Sometime between 1828 and 1832, a copy of One Hundred Fables, Original and Selected by James Northcote (1828) was bound with leopard skin panels. This is that copy.

Bound unsigned in contemporary deep oxblood goatskin, it possesses a gilt and blindstamped frame that encloses leopard skin panels to both sides. The spine is decorated with gilt strapwork  with the publication date in gilt at its tail. Broad turn-ins  with multiple gilt fillets, thick and thin, and gilt corner ornaments grace the inside covers. All edges are gilt. The bookplate of F. Hornsby Wright is mounted to the front free-endpaper. The neat signature of his ancestor, Joseph Wright, the original owner of this  large-paper copy, is found in the upper right corner of the title page.

An autograph note initialed by F. Hornsby Wright  (director of Arnot and Harrison, an engineering and toolmaking company that worked in British aeronautics and automobile manufacture during the early decades of the twentieth century) and tipped-in to the front paste-down endpaper reads: 

"Joseph Wright 1769-1836 while quartered at Tower of London a leopard which was kept there died and part of its skin was used to bind this book." 

Joseph Wright was quartered in the Tower as part of its military guard; he was not a prisoner. on the way to losing his limbs. By the 19th century the Tower was no longer employed as a splendid jail, never its primary purpose, and its reputation as a torture chamber is highly exaggerated, more legend than fact..

No, if you were high-born and headed for the chopping-block you were sent up the block to Tower Hill, the better to be beheaded in the presence of a crowd.

Tower of London seen from across the river Thames.

Founded in 1066 by William the Conqueror, by 1210, Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, commonly known as the Tower of London, housed the Royal Menagerie established by King John. 

"For over 600 years, animals were kept at the Tower for the entertainment and curiosity of the court. Everything from elephants to tigers, kangaroos and ostriches lived in what was known as the Royal Menagerie. Under James I, the bloody sport of baiting became very popular and a platform was built over the dens so that the King and his courtiers could watch lions, bears and dogs being made to fight each other to the death.

"In later years, the variety of animals at the Tower increased and the Menagerie became a popular attraction. At the Royal Menagerie, visitors could see strange and rare beasts that they would never have seen before. The Menagerie finally closed after several incidents where the animals had escaped and attacked each other, visitors and Tower staff. The Duke of Wellington, who was Constable of the Tower [1826-1852], ordered the animals to leave and in 1832 they arrived at their new home in London Zoo" (Historic Royal Places - Tower of London).

In short, the 280 residents of the Royal Menagerie, representing over sixty species, met their Waterloo by the man who introduced Napoleon to his. Exile to the new London Zoo at Regent Park was, however, a far better fate than Napoleon's at St. Helena. 

The Royal Menagerie had been opened to the public during the eighteenth century; admission was three half-pence. If you didn't have the cash, a dog or cat was accepted as legal tender,  employed as tender vittles for the lions. I can't help but think that Nappy would have made an impressive, exotic caged exhibit attracting throngs had he been sent to the menagerie instead of a remote island.  The cost of Napoleon's upkeep could have easily been covered with profit and had he escaped he would not have gotten far before being re-captured, dethroned French emperors a conspicuous sight in London.

The author of One Hundred Fables, James Northcote (1736-1831), was a renowned British painter and a member of the Royal Academy who also sought fame as an writer. His Fables, the first series published in 1828, the second posthumously in 1833, were illustrated with woodcuts by William Harvey (1796-1866) from Northcote's own designs.

"The original invention and designs for the prints at the head of each fable are my own, yet they have been most excellently drawn on wood and prepared for the engravers by Mr. William Harvey ... the ornamental letter at the beginning of each fable and the vignette at the end are solely the invention of Mr. Harvey" (from the Preface).

Most of the animals in the Royal Menagerie, particularly the large ones, were given names by the staff but, alas, most of their names have been lost to history. In 1829 the Royal Menagerie was home to three leopards, one of whom became immortalized in this binding, cause of death unknown to me.

Martyred in the cause of the book arts, Booktryst will call this anonymous panthera pardus Il Gattopardo, in homage to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's magnificent novel (1958) about a noble Sicilian big-cat who must adapt to the encroachment of Garibaldi's Red Shhrts upon his territory and adjust to a new order.

First edition.

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[BINDING, Exotic Animal Skin]. NORTHCOTE, James. [HARVEY, William, engraver]. One Hundred Fables, Original and Selected by James Northcote, R.A. Embellished with Two Hundred and Eighty Engravings on Wood. London: Geo. Lawford, 1828.

First edition, a large-paper copy. Quarto (10 1/8 x 5 7/8 in; 257 x 149 mm). [2], iii, [1, blank], 272 pp. Title page in black and red with woodcut vignette. 280 wood engravings as head- and tail-pieces and historiated initials. With the bookplate of F. Hornby Wright and his initialed autograph note mounted to front endpapers.

Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, 55.

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Images of One Hundred Fables courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Last Chance To See Cruikshank's Greenwich Hospital In Original Boards

By Stephen J. Gertz

Take a good look at the book above. It is likely the first and last time you have  seen or will ever see  Greenwich Hospital, A Series of Naval Sketches, Descriptive of the Life of a Man-O-War's Man. By an Old Sailor. With Illustrations by George Cruikshank (1826) in its original boards. According to the ABPC Index, the last time a copy in the  publisher's hardcover issue came to auction was sixty-eight years ago in 1944.

A rare book? More like an astonishment.

Billy Culmer and the Goose.

Rumor and whispers accompanied this extremely rare volume at the recent Olympia Book Fair in London. It was immediately pounced upon, and the trail of tears leaving the Sims Reed booth presented a hazard to attendees who risked slipping on the path of disappointment trod by chagrined dealers who, alas, were too late to seize this amazing copy of the satiric memoirs of a British navy man in and around the Old Royal Naval College and Hospital, established at Greenwich in 1694.

Scud Hill.

According to Cohn's catalogue raisonné of Cruikshank, the book was "Originally published in four parts, and then in pink paper picture boards, with woodcuts on the top and bottom covers duplicated from those in the text...In the original parts the work is of the utmost rarity, while in the original boards it is extremely scarce. [Re]Bound copies are much more usual."

Wildly popular upon its publication the book wasn't read so much as mauled, and since Cohn wrote in 1914 rebound copies have become the rule broken only when lightning strikes.

Crossing the Line.

Of George Cruikshank (1792-1878), little need be added here beyond the fact that he followed his father, Isaac Cruikshank, into the trade and was the successor to Thomas Rowlandson; he was the greatest caricaturist of his era, known as "the Modern Hogarth." 

Flying Artillery or A Horse Marine.

The pseudonymous Old Sailor who wrote the text is, however, another matter.

The Point of Honor.

"Matthew Henry Barker (pseud. the Old Sailor, 1790–1846), sailor and writer...served in the Royal Navy...After retiring from the service in 1813, he commanded a hired armed schooner...and was employed ... in carrying dispatches to the English squadrons on the southern coasts of France and Spain. On one occasion he fell into the enemy's hands and was detained for some months as a prisoner of war. In 1825 he became editor of a West India newspaper and was afterwards employed, from 1827 to 1838, in a similar capacity at Nottingham... 

Sailors Carousing; or a peep in the Long-Room.

"Under the pseudonym the Old Sailor, Barker wrote a number of lively and spirited sea tales, very popular in their day. These included such works as Land and Sea Tales (1836); Topsail-Sheet Blocks, or, The Naval Foundling (1838), which ran into several editions; The Naval Club, or, Reminiscences of Service (1843); and The Victory, or, The Wardroom Mess (1844). He was naval editor of the United Service Gazette and a frequent contributor to the Literary Gazette, the Pictorial Times, and Bentley's Miscellany, the last at the time under the editorship of Charles Dickens, who came to value the consistent quality of the contributions of ‘the old Sailor’. Barker was a friend of George Cruikshank, who illustrated seven of his works. One of the most attractive of these was the reprint of a series of sketches originally published in the Literary Gazette as ‘The Life of a Man-of-War's Man’. The volume edition was called Greenwich Hospital (1826) and was a great success with the public, going into an almost immediate reissue. Two other of his works illustrated by Cruikshank were Tough Yarns (1835), which he dedicated to Captain Marryat, and Nights at Sea (1852). He was also a chief contributor to Cruikshank's Omnibus.

"Barker felt that his publishers were less than generous with him, and the situation became worse as his sea tales fell out of fashion. He was married, but had increasing difficulty in supporting his family. He died, in poverty, on 29 June 1846" (Oxford DNB).

Woodcut, rear board.

Originally costing one  guinea (21 British shillings, i.e. £1 1s), Barker could comfortably support his family for a lifetime on what this book in original boards now fetches.

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Title page, with offset from frontispiece.
The Old Royal Naval College and Hospital in vignette background.

[CRUIKSHANK, George, artist]. AN OLD SAILOR [pseudonym of M.H. Barker]. Greenwich Hospital. A Series of Naval Sketches, Descriptive of the Life of a Man-O-War's Man. By an Old Sailor. With Illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: James Robins and Co., 1826.

First edition. Quarto (11 1/4 x 8 3/4 in; 284 x 222 mm). iv, 200 pp. Twelve hand-colored engraved plates, including frontispiece.  Sixteen text woodcuts.

Publisher's original pink-paper printed and pictorial boards.

Cohn 53 (1924 ed).

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Rare Book That Turned Elizabeth I into Queen of Heaven

Yesterday, Queen of England. Today, Mother of God.

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1578 an astonishing book was published in England, astonishing particularly if you were a Catholic. The volume, A Booke of Christian Prayers, contained a frontispiece portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain’s reigning monarch, as the new Queen of Heaven, knocking Mary off the throne.

Further, the book, gloriously decorated with elaborate historiated borders, had illustrations within those borders that might trouble Christians of the Roman stripe. Some border details are distinctly anti-Papist.

The portrait had appeared in the first edition of 1569 yet this new edition was so different in content and appearance that the two editions (both commonly known as Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book) are considered to be separate works. With its historiated borders, their content, as well as the portrait of Elizabeth I, the 1578 is a magnificent and dramatically iconoclastic volume.

This famous woodcut portrait, possibly by lady-in-waiting and court painter Levina Teerlinc,  on the verso of the title-page depicts Elizabeth at prayer. "In an outstanding example of iconoclasm, Elizabeth receives the place of honor  in collections of prayers comparable to the Horae, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary once reigned supreme as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven" (King, Tudor Royal Iconography, p. 114). A prayer of Solomon which forms the epigraph suggests that the queen has supplanted the sage biblical king as wise governor who has re-established the Lord's Temple by imposing a Protestant settlement and bringing peace to Britannia. Down with the Church of Rome; up with the Church of England.

The striking woodcut borders, designed in the manner of Holbein and Dürer, give visual life to the prayers. Arranged in seven successive sections, each follows a different theme in the canon of Elizabethan popular devotional iconography: the life of Christ; the personifications of Christian virtues and vices; the action of Christian virtues in daily life; personifications of the senses; the the Apocalypse; the Dance of Death, and, finally, various elements of Christian eschatology.

The woodcuts are signed, and in three forms: the first series by an unidentified "C.I." and the Dance of Death with a "G" except for the penultimate signed "CT." Artist "G" may be Marcus Gheeraerts the younger.

What makes this book truly remarkable is its place within English printing history. At a time when the English printing industry was distinctly less sophisticated than that on the Continent, this is one of the few English books of the sixteenth century that can proudly take its place amongst the finest examples of contemporary European printing. As such, the book is a magnificent tribute to publisher John Daye's typographical skills.

"Richard Day (b. 1552, d. in or before 1606), printer and Church of England clergyman, was born at Aldersgate, London, on 21 December 1552, the son of the printer John Day (1521/2–1584)... In 1576 Day assisted his father in the printing of, and wrote some of the prefixed verses to, the third edition of Foxe's Actes and Monuments. The following year, on 28 August 1577, he was named as co-patentee when his father secured the renewal of a lucrative patent for the printing of a number of works including the Psalms in metre and the ABC with Little Catechism, although it appears that Richard may have gained his half-share by misleading his father about the terms of the grant.

"Day entered his first book in the company's registers on 28 May 1578, his own translation of John Foxe's Christ Jesus Triumphant. The work was followed by a newly prefaced edition of A Booke of Christian Prayers, Collected out of the Auncient Writers, otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book. He also variously edited, translated, registered, and printed a handful of books over the next two years. However, his father evidently did not allow him to produce any works covered by the 1577 patent, as Richard took to pirating the little catechism and the metrical Psalms. As a result, in 1580 his father, then master of the Stationers' Company, assisted by the company's wardens, entered Richard's premises and took from him the bulk of his books, type, and press. No books were issued by Richard Day after this event.

"Despite an attempt by his father in his final years to revoke Richard Day's rights to the 1577 patent, the patent continued in Richard's name until at least 1604 although all printing for it was done by five nominated assigns. Richard died some time before 13 April 1606..." (DNB).

This edition exists in two states. The most readily available, albeit still quite rare, has the Preface signed “R.D.” In the scarcer variant the Preface is signed “Richard Daye.”

“As a repository of traditional iconographical material A Booke of Christian Prayers is unique among publications of the Elizabethan period” (Chew, The Iconography of “A Booke of Christian Prayers"(1578). Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 293).

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DAYE, Richard. A Booke of Christian Prayers collected out of the auncie[n]t writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians, in these daungerous and troublesome dayes, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercyfull unto us. London: John Daye, 1578.

First edition, the rare variant with Preface signed "Richard Daye,"  Octavo.  [12], [274], [1], [3 as index.], [1, colophon] pp., the pages numbered as 137 leaves. Woodcut engraved title page, woodcut frontispiece portrait of Elizabeth Regina at prayer.  Magnificent,  elaborately historiated woodcut borders designed after Holbein, Dürer, and contemporaries. Text in Roman and Black Letter.

ESTC 6429. Lowndes 1496.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books. Collectors may inquire here.

A tip o' the hat to Peter Harrington.
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