Thomas Cartwright | A confutation of the Rhemists translation, glosses and annotations on the New Testament. Leiden, 1618, a good example of a book from the Pilgrim Press

Thomas Cartwright

A confutation of the Rhemists translation, glosses and annotations on the New Testament, so farre as they containe manifest impieties, heresies, idolatries, superstitions, prophanesse, treasons, slanders, absurdities, falsehoods and other evills. [Leiden: William Brewster], 1618

FIRST EDITION, folio (295 x 185mm.), title with “Brewster Bear” printer’s device, binder’s stubs at front with early manuscript list of related book titles (“Fulke on ye Test[ament],” etc.), occasional neat ink underlinings, sometimes with a tiny manicule in the margin, contemporary deerskin, rebacked with pigskin in the nineteenth century, preserved in a fine modern red morocco-backed, fleece-lined clamshell box, short tear to inner margin of title and a little soiling to same, small wormholes to head margin of four quires at beginning and to gutter margin on final 50 leaves (just touching a few letters), isolated small marginal smudges or stains, boards somewhat stained and soiled, edges and corners a bit worn

An attractive copy of the most substantial and ambitious production among the twenty books known to have been printed in Leiden by expatriate English Puritan and future Pilgrim Father William Brewster (1567-1644).

Later dubbed the “Pilgrim Press,” his workshop operated between 1617 and 1619, when agents of James I tracked it down and destroyed it. After being briefly detained by the authorities, Brewster dropped out of sight for about a year, reappearing in 1620 to sail for North America on board the Mayflower. Like his other works, it is a reformist religious book intended for (illegal) distribution in England. The text here is a refutation of the 1582 Rheims Catholic New Testament by the Cambridge reformist theologian Thomas Cartwright (1534/5-1603), whose controversial views and fiery sermons Brewster would have encountered as a student at the university in the 1580s. Here, Cartwright picks apart the Rheims translation of the Gospel of Matthew line by line, then takes on other selected passages. The present copy is complete with the index and the errata sheet.

REFERENCES: Herbert 364; STC 4709; ESTC S107186; Harris, “The Pilgrim Press” 16

PROVENANCE: title with acquisition information, indicating a purchase price (11 shillings, 6 pence?) in 1629