Halifax, George Saville, first Marquess of

Scribal manuscript in a single mixed hand, red ruled margins, contemporary pagination, 180 pages, folio (315 x 200 mm), 1680s. Contemporary parchment boards decorated in blind with border and panel, ornate cornerpieces stamped in black seemingly added later.

Thomas Philip, 2^nd Earl de Grey (1781–1859; armorial bookplate). acquisition: Maggs's, 1956

CELM HaG 22

"...Our trimmer hath as great veneration for Lawes in Generall as he hath more particularly for his owne, Hee Looketh upon them as the Chaines that tye up our unruly pasions which Else Like wild Beasts Lett Loose would reduce the world to It's first estate of Barbarisme and hostility..."

A highly attractive copy of a celebrated tract in praise of political moderation. The Marquess of Halifax was a leading figure in the Privy Council of Charles II, standing between hard-line Whigs in Parliament and the crypto-Catholic Tories close to the Duke of York. Halifax circulated his Character of a Trimmer in manuscript in early 1685 as a veiled attack on the Tories. Within weeks, however, Charles II was dead, the Duke of York was King James II, and Halifax was out of power. 

This tract survives in twenty-two recorded manuscript copies, the vast majority in institutional libraries. Most of these scribal copies are likely to have been produced before the tract was printed in April 1688.