An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the first Times till the Reign of Edward the third. [- The Continuation of an Historicall Discourse of the

£1,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

“This [scarcity of the first edition] occasion’d the private Reprinting of it in the year 1672, which as soon as the Government perceived, they Prosecuted both the Publisher and the Book so violently, that many hundreds of the Books were seized and burnt; …” - John Starkey, bookseller, preface to the 1689 folio edition. Wing B349. Entered by ESTC under John Selden. This attribution is based on a statement by the publisher John Starkey in the preface to the 1689 edition: “It was well known to, and owned by, the late Lord Chief Justice Vaughan , who was one of the Executors of the Great and learned Mr. Selden , that the Ground-work was his, upon which Mr. Bacon raised this Superstructure , which hath been and is so well esteem’d, that it is now again made publick, by John Starkey.” Although he is only named on the title to the Continuation (Part 2) and then in a way that could suggest he only wrote the preface, it is certain that the book was written not by Selden but by Nathaniel Bacon (1593-1660), presbyterian MP for Cambridge University in the Long Parliament from 1645 (briefly excluded in Pride’s ‘Purge’ in December 1648). Joseph A. Dane has unravelled the complictaed story of this edition in his essay, “Seized, Burnt, and Variant: Bibliographical Note on Nathaniel Bacon, ‘An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England’ [1672]”, in PBSA , Vol. 102/1 (March 2008), p. 95-102. This is the original issue of the ?1672 reprint of the 1647-51 first edition

• Printing: first

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