By the King: A Proclamation for Restraint of Excessive Carriages...
Carriages Over One Ton Banned "Upon Pain of Our Heavy Indignation" [Broadside]. [Highways]. Charles I [1600-1649], King of England. By the King. A Proclamation for Restraint of Excessive Carriages, To the Destruction of the High Ways. London: Imprinted...by Robert Barker and by the Assignes of Iohn Bill, 1635. 14-1/4" x 10-1/4" 2 ff. broadside, text in single column below headline and large woodcut royal arms, 8-line woodcut initial. Moderate toning, very light foxing and soiling, slight horizontal fold lines, faint dampstain to bottom and two small worm holes near top of both sheets, minor loss to woodcut but no loss to text, crease to left edge of first sheet, which is mended at bottom edge just touching a few letters of text without loss. Housed in attractive 15" x 11" green buckram folder with red morocco lettering piece to front. $2,000. * Despite previous attempts to regulate excessively heavy carriages, the king and his people still found "by dayly experience" that "those great abuses" were "still continued and increased." This two-page proclamation restricts carriages to "twenty hundred weight" (one ton) and imposed limits of either five horses, five oxen or four oxen and two horses. It also encourages local officials to keep up with highway maintenance and "answere the contrary at their perils." Offenders were duly reported to the attorney general as a public nuisance, where they would receive "such punishment as their contempts and offences shall deserve." OCLC and the ESTC locate 1 copy of this scarce broadside in North America (Huntington Library). English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) S122973.
Price: $2,000.00
Book number 74440