Robert Persons, Memorial for the Reformation of England, manuscript on paper in English, with four other volumes [seventeenth to eighteenth century]

five volumes, comprising: (a) Persons, Memorial for the Reformation of England, 185mm. by 150mm., 80 leaves with 28-35 lines in a loose humanistic hand, modern marbled boards with red cloth spine, Bergendal MS.82, England, seventeenth century (Kristeller, VI, p.456); (b) Prayerbook, in Latin and French on paper, 72 leaves, 160mm. by 100mm., original leather over pasteboards, Bergendal MS.22, France, seventeenth century; (c) Miniature Prayerbook in Latin on vellum, 263 leaves, 115mm. by 75mm., in a fine calligraphic bookhand, rubrics and headings in red, black morocco over pasteboards, rebacked, Phillipps MS.704 (changed to 23866) and Bergendal MS.23, Germany (probably Trier), seventeenth century; (d) Philosophical tracts, in Latin on paper, 231 leaves, 240mm. by 170mm., contemporary vellum over pasteboards, Bergendal MS.106, written by Felix Augier while a student at the Jesuit College of Sainte Marthe, Poitiers, in 1649; (e) Antiphonal of Benedictine use, in Latin on paper, 106 leaves, 155mm. by 90mm., rubrics and staves in red, original leather over pasteboards, Bergendal MS.85, Austria, eighteenth century; all in good and presentable condition

Item (a) is a copy of a recusant tract, beseeching the English to return to Catholicism, originally written by Father Robert Persons in 1596. He left England in 1575 and entered the Jesuit order, returning with Edmund Campion in 1580, and narrowly escaping again after Campion's arrest and martyrdom. He died in Rome in 1610.