Smythe, Instructions, Observations, and Orders Mylitarie, London, 1595, mottled calf

SMYTHE, SIR JOHN

Instructions, observations, and orders mylitarie. Requisite for all chieftaines, captaines, and higher and lower men of charge... London: Richard Jones, 1595

4to (184 x 133mm.), woodcut head-pieces and initials, later mottled calf, rebacked, new endpapers, leaf P2 torn at lower edge, some minor soiling and staining, lower hinge broken

A reissue, with expanded preliminaries and cancel title page, of Certen instructions, observations and orders militarie (STC 22884), by the great contemporary authority on archery, the soldier and diplomat Sir John Smythe. Cockle records that from the writings of Smythe and Patten "it is possible to gather a good general state of the army in England in the middle of the sixteenth century... So conservative is the author, that he would reject any man for an archer who should draw his bow with two fingers, after the new fashion, instead of with three, after the old" (p.51).

LITERATURE:

Cockle 60; ESTC S117635; STC 22885

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Francis Fremantle, armorial bookplate