[Leicester's Commonwealth.]

manuscript, in a single scribal secretary hand, red ruled margins with occasional marginal notes (171 pages), followed by "A godly and proffitable meditation taken out of the 20 Chapter of the booke of Job" in Latin and English (3 pages), "An Addition of the Translator, in which are declared many enormous and unchristian actes committed by the sayd Erle of Leycester" (20 pages), and, in a different hand, "A Short View of Kinge Henry the third his Raigne" (2 pages), altogether 196 pages, plus blanks, 4to, late sixteenth century, contemporary calf gilt with gilt stamp centrepiece with initials "E O", covers worn, extensive loss at spine, staining

"...his Lo: is furnyshed of all sortes of Counsellors and fitt instrumentes for all exploytes; for he employeth some for bawdry; others for rapyne and extortions, and some for conjuring inchaunting and sorcery..." (pp.189-90)



A contemporary manuscript of the most potent and widely read political libel of Elizabethan England. This scurrilous attack on Leicester, the Queen's favourite, was published in 1580 and was probably the work of the exiled Jesuit Robert Persons (although this is still disputed). It circulated very widely in manuscript; the online CELM database lists 91 copies. This copy, which is not in CELM, includes a meditation on Job that is found alongside the work in a number of contemporary manuscripts, and an English translation of an "addition" that was incorporated into the 1585 French translation of Leicester's Commonwealth.  

Thomas Jermyn (ownership inscription); "William Chiffinch Given by his Master Tho: Jermyn Esq." (ownership inscription, 17th century); Augustus, Third Duke of Grafton, d.1811 (armorial bookplate); his son, the Rev. Lord Henry Fitz Roy, d.1828 (book label dated 1811); John Cochran, book dealer, A Second Catalogue of Manuscripts (1837), item 385, priced £2 2s; The Law Society (bookplate)