The Great Book of Thomas Trevilian. A Facsimile from the manuscript in the Wormsley Library. With a study by Nicolas Barker. For presentation to the members of the Roxburghe Club, 2000. 2 Volumes.

£2,200 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

On 12 September 1616, Thomas Trevilian reached page 456, less than half way through his Great Book of pictures and texts. Here he drew breath by inserting his name and an extravagant knotwork initial ‘T’, noting beneath that he was ‘68 yeares of age’ (this is the only fact we know of his life) in the 14th year of the reign of King James I, ‘whom heavenly angels guard from treacharie’. 1616 is the year that Shakespeare died and it is into the glorious imagery and colour of this world that Trevilian allows us to enter through the pages of his Great Book as if through a window.The Great Book reflects Trevilian’s life and beliefs: loyalty to the crown and the Protestant faith were firmly linked as the foundation of his existence and of his life’s work. the ‘matter’, in his own words , ‘is three folde, historicall, propheticall, and evangelicall, the first teaching examples, the second manners, and the laste a spirituall and heavenly institution’, but ‘it is a miscelane and now otherwise to be respected, not learned, and therefore the easyer to be pardoned’.There are 12 main sections:1 - Almanacs: calendar, astronomical ad topographical material (1-90);2 - Old Testament history from the Creation and Flood to Josiah (91-144)3 - Kings and Queens of England from Albion to James 1 and Scotland from Robert ii (145-246)4 - The Godly reformers: lives and portraits (247-264)5 - ‘Princeps Proditorum’: verses and portraits of Papist traitors including the Gunpowder Plotters (265-272)6 - She

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