Bacon, Sir Francis — Lambarde, William

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

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Description

Of the lately erected service called the Office of Composicions for Alyenacions written by the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam late Chancellor of England
paper

Scribal manuscript in a single seventeenth-century secretarial hand with engrossed initials and occasional marginal glosses in the same hand, 52 pages, folio, probably early 1620s. Crushed red morocco gilt by Sangorski and Sutcliffe.

Provenance

"For my son George Parker" and, in a different hand, "Thomas Parker" (inscriptions on front free endpaper). acquisition: Gilbertson, 1965

Literature

CELM BcF 744

Catalogue Note

A contemporary scribal manuscript of a work commonly attributed to Francis Bacon. Of the eighteen known manuscript copies of this work (almost all of which are in institutional libraries), seven attribute this tract to Bacon. It was in fact written by the antiquary and lawyer William Lambarde (1536-1601), and his partially autograph working manuscript of the tract survives in the Folger Shakespeare Library (MS V.a.208). Lambarde was appointed Lord Burghley's deputy as Master of the Alienations Office in 1589. The Office, which had been established in the 1570s, handled crown fees for the transfer of land and was an important source of government revenue.