WILLIAMS, Roger, Sir

by Roger, Sir Williams

£5,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

A fine copy of the rare, posthumous, first edition of this most interesting and influential personal recollection of the wars in the Netherlands by Roger Williams whose 1590 treatise, A Briefe Discourse of Warre is almost the only Renaissance military text written by an Englishman that is incontrovertibly authoritative and comparable in quality to the most advanced and influential Continental works on sixteenth-century warfare. John X. Evans, The Works of Sir Roger Williams . This book had two editors, Hayward, and Sir Peter Manwood, who owned the manuscript and had formally lent it to Grimstone. The plan of it leads one to conclude that this is merely a fragment; but whether the residue was never written, or whether it be perished, or whether it restesth in any other hand says Haywood, I remain doubtful . It came to him in a ragged hand, and much maimed, both in sense and in phrase. Having restored it as nearly as he could to the style and meaning of the author, he and Manwood caused it to be published in the hope of drawing into light the residue, if there was any extant. Pp. 1-56 treats of the beginning of the troubles in the Netherlands, much of the information contained therein having been given to the author by William of Orange. Page 56 chronicles the arrival at Flushing in June, 1572, of Captain Thomas Morgan with 300 Englishman, among whom was Williams himself. This was the first band of British to serve the low countries against Spain. Previously, though there had b

• Binding: Hardcover

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