An Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government...
Selden's Historical Discourse Selden, John [1584-1654] Bacon, Nathaniel [1593-1660], Editor, Attributed Author. An Historical and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England, From the First Times to the End of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. With a Vindication of the Antient Way of Parliaments in England. Collected from Some Manuscript Notes of John Selden, Esq; By Nathaniel Bacon, Of Grays Inn, Esq; Corrected and Improved by a Gentleman of the Middle-Temple. London: Printed for Daniel Browne... and A. Millar, 1760. Two parts. [iv], viii, xiii-xix, 203, [1]; xii, 178, [8] pp. Leaves between [iv] and xiii-xix bound out of order. Text complete. Folio (12-1/2" x 7-1/2"). Contemporary calf, gilt rules to boards, gilt-edged raised bands and lettering piece to spine, speckled edges, blind tooling to board edges. Light rubbing and some shallow scuffing to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities, boards beginning to separate, but quite secure. Title page printed in red and black. Light toning to interior, light soiling to upper margins and light foxing in a few places, minor worming to front pastedown and free endpaper, light browning and offsetting to title page and sections of following leaf, upper-outside corner removed from title page with no loss to text. $200. * Fourth edition. Often attributed to Bacon, the Historical Discourse "is a sort of constitutional history of England, showing much knowledge of the development of the institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, and pervaded by a strong spirit of hostility to the claims of the royal prerogative and to hierarchical pretensions." (DNB). "The first edition having become so rare a second edition was secretly printed in 1672 which was suppressed. It was again secretly reprinted in 1682 and the publishers were prosecuted. The 1682 edition appears to have been reissued in 1689 with the 1682 imprint" (Sweet & Maxwell). The final edition, the fifth was published in 1760. Dictionary of National Biography I:836-837. Sweet & Maxwell, A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth 1:99. English Short-Title Catalogue T142997.
Price: $200.00
Book number 78651