Feilde, Henry

Fine calligraphic manuscript comprising a substantial collection of tracts, verses, letters, and other texts relating to English affairs of state, including Robert Persons's A Conference about the Next Succession (copied from the printed edition of 1595) and various texts concerning the fall of public figures and state trials, including Mary, Queen of Scots, the Second Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ralegh, Lord Sanquhar, the Earl of Somerset and others involved in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and Francis Bacon, also "[37] Letters of Sir Frauncis Bacon ... Solicitor Generall," and miscellaneous letters and speeches relating to state affairs in the Jacobean period, mostly in a secretary hand with use of italic for verse, marginal notes and emphasis, mostly in black ink with red for titles and emphasis, decorated title-page with a border made up of floral decorations with an eagle cut from an earlier manuscript (probably fifteenth/sixteenth century) in red, blue, green and gold, with title page, three part-titles, and several other pages decorated with roundels, decorative borders and rules often filled with red ink or colored wash, 703 pages, folio (301 x 201 mm), dated 1642, occasional slight paper corrosion from acidic content of ink; early nineteenth-century polished calf gilt with gilt lettering on spine ("Tracts | MSS. 1594. | English History"), edges gilt, skilfully rehinged

Henry Feilde — George Hibbert, 1757–1837 (Evans, London, 16 March–6 June 1829, lot 3115) — Joseph Haslewood, 1769–1833 (armorial book label; Evans, London, 16 December 1833, lot 1326, £6 8s 6d with auctioneer's lot label remaining on spine) — Charles Winn of Nostell Priory (armorial book label) — Christie's, London, 2 July 1975, lot 229, to HP Kraus — Sotheby's New York, 17 December 1992, lot 95. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale.

Little is known of Henry Feilde, but he was the scribe responsible for several manuscripts in this distinctive calligraphic hand, most significantly the Merton MS of Donne's Sermons (now Bodleian Library, MS Eng.th.c.71). In common with many other such compilations of the period, this volume is predominantly concerned with the fall of great public figures. It includes numerous poems, including the popular "The Earl of Essex His Bee" (this copy recorded in CELM EsR 85) and verse libels on Ralegh, Somerset, and other public figures.