Her Book of Sermons Anno Dom 1705.

£8,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

An attractive and carefully produced volume of 47 unpublished manuscript sermons by the Rev. Thomas Watts, a young Bristol clergyman who died prematurely of a “distemper” in October 1705 (aged 27). The volume was produced by a Rachel Millerd (who begins the collection with a very fine calligraphic title-page) from a group of 150 “left compleat in his study” at the time of his death. Also included in the volume is a long extract from Edward Nokes’s funeral sermon for Watts in which he describes their friendship and describes life as a young clergyman in England at the beginning of the 18th century. We have not been able to identify Rachel Millerd (her surname could be read as Willerd but there were a number of people named Millerd or Millard in Bristol in the late 17th/early 18th Centuries (most notably James Millerd who produced two maps and a prospect of Bristol in 1673) and only a very few named Willerd or Willard and they are probably mistranscriptions in any case). She may possibly be the Rachel Millard, daughter of Thomas, baptised at the Church of SS Philip Jacob in the centre of Bristol on 2 October 1687 - this would have made her aged 17/18 in 1705. In a note before the main text, Rachel Millerd states: “This Book Containeth 47 sermons of ^the Revd^ Thomas Watts, sometime Curate of St Nicholas Church in the Citty of Bristoll, being part of 150 left compleat in his study at the time of his death: He was a man of great Piety, given to studdy devotion, He departed this L

• Year: 1705

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