Elizabeth I--Dethick, William.

Latin dedication to Queen Elizabeth I ("Cum Sacratissimae et Serenissimae vestrae Maiestatis splendor (Regina Augustissima) per remotissimas Orbis terrarium partes longe lateque diffusus...") followed by 35 illuminated coats of arms of Knights of the Garter in order of their creation from 1462 to 148; 20 vellum leaves (including final blank), 4to (230 x 165 mm.), unquired bifolia, contemporary dark blue velvet over boards with remnants of gold-lace ties, 1591, tear to first leaf (57 mm.) at hinge with no loss, some silver oxidised, some discolouration to illuminations (especially to blue), some smudges and imperfections to vellum, rebacked, approximately 25-30 mm. of velvet remaining at spine edge of each board

an outstanding piece of workmanship and a rare and evocative remnant of the court of elizabeth i. This magnificent volume of the arms of Garter Knights created by the first Yorkist king was almost certainly presented to Queen Elizabeth as a New Year's gift in 1591-2, although the gift-rolls of those years, in which all such gifts were recorded, are not extant. The elaborate ceremony of New Year gift-giving was a central event in the calendar of the court, at which gifts were exchanged between the Queen and all echelons of her court. Favourites and great aristocrats competed for attention through their gifts of ornate and often fantastical jewellery, whilst more humble servants of the crown celebrated their ongoing service by presenting appropriate gifts.

A book containing the arms of historical Garter Knights was a typical gift from a herald. A number of similar manuscripts survive, most notably a collection of nine volumes presented to Queen Elizabeth by Sir Gilbert Dethick (father of William and his predecessor as Garter King of Arms), sold in these rooms 18 December 1986, lot 203. The surviving gift-roll of 1588 records that William Dethick gave "A booke of Armes of the noble men [actually Garter Knights] in Henry the fifts tyme" (this manuscript is now British Library, Harley MS 1864). The gift of Henry V's knights three years before those of Edward IV suggests that Dethick may have been moving sequentially through the history of the Order of the Garter in his gifts to the Queen.

This volume provides magnificent illustrations of the arms of leading Yorkists, many of whose names are familiar from Shakespeare’s first tetralogy. These include William, Lord Hastings (argent, a maunch sable); the king's brother-in-law and renowned jouster Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales (later Lord Rivers), whose arms quarter the 6 escallops of Scales with the Woodville arms (argent, a fess and quarter gules); Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (who shows his descent from Edward I in first and fourth quarters); William Herbert, created Earl of Pembroke in 1469 (gules and azure, three lions rampant argent); and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. A reminder that heraldry remained a politically sensitive subject is the coat of arms of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was close to Edward and became the wealthiest peer in England: as a mark of favour he was allowed to carry the arms of his royal ancestor, Thomas of Woodstock, (those of England with a bordure argent) without any lower coats of dignity. It is interesting to note that Dethick does not give Buckingham this dignity (Woodstock’s arms are only in the first quarter); perhaps he chose not to emphasise the royal pedigree of the Stafford family to a royal mistress always sensitive on matters touching the succession. Royalty figures prominently among the Knights of the Garter, the volume includes the arms of Edward's two brothers (George, Duke of Clarence, and the future Richard III) and eldest son (later, briefly, Edward V). These Garter Knights were living through the violent internecine struggles of the Wars of the Roses: few were to die in their beds. The royal Garter Knights of the House of York all died violently, while Hastings, Rivers, and Buckingham were later executed during Richard III’s brief reign.

Edward IV used the Order of the Garter as a tool in international diplomacy, as did other monarchs before and since (Elizabeth’s Knights included the Emperor Maximilian and the French King Henri IV). The volume includes a number of foreign royals who were invested during the reign such as John II of Portugal, Ferdinand King of Naples and Sicily, Francesco Sforza Duke of Milan, and Frederico Duke of Urbino. There are, in fact, a number of errors in the volume, including the names of the King of Castile (given as Henry rather than Ferdinand) and the King of Portugal (given as Alfonso rather than John).

The quality of workmanship in this manuscript is extremely high, but the man who produced it, William Dethick (1543-1612) Garter King of Arms, was a quarrelsome and inadequate herald - even by the notoriously low standards of the Elizabethan College of Arms, whose abuses of office were catalogued in a surviving "Remembrance" (BL, Add. MS 25247, fols 291-96). Dethick granted arms which he was not entitled to give (including the famous grant to William Shakespeare's father), was accused of pedigree forgery, slandered his fellow heralds, allegedly once "gaue also the Auncient, and Royall Armes of England, with very Little difference to one daukin a plaisterer", and was prone to outbursts of violence when officiating at state occasions (during Sir Henry Sidney's funeral, for example, he attacked the minister).

The manuscript seems to have migrated from the Royal collection at some point in the seventeenth century, perhaps in the years immediately after the Regicide when the entire collection was nearly sold off. It is not found in the catalogue of the Royal library included in Bernard, Catalogi Manuscriptorum Angliae (1698).