Two other books in the Franks collection are connected by their stamps with Parker's royal mistress. One of these bears the well-known Falcon badge which Elizabeth adopted in imitation of her mother. This is found on a copy of Etienne Dolet's 'De Latina lingua' printed at Basel in 1539. I do not know if the point has been raised and settled as to whether this badge was used by Elizabeth, both as queen and as princess, but there is at least nothing to prevent our supposing that this treatise of Dolet's was one of Elizabeth's school-books, and thus often in her hands. It is at least a point in favour of such a supposition that the badge in this case is sharper and fresher than on any other book I have ever seen. The other Elizabethan book in the collection is even more interesting, for its covers are embossed with the portrait-stamp of the queen here reproduced, and no other instance of the use of the stamp is recorded. The book is the Plantin Greek Testament of 1583, an edition which the queen would be very likely to possess. But whether this copy was ever in her library we have no means of deciding, the alternatives of presentation to and presentation by, of ownership by the original of the portrait or by some loyal subject, being very equally balanced. The stamp in this case is slightly raised, and is the earliest instance of a cameo stamp on any English binding.
The only other sixteenth-century English armorial stamps in the collection are two examples of the stamp used by William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, one in gold on a copy of the Greek Testament of Erasmus printed at Basel in 1570, the other in silver on a Hebrew Bible issued from the press of Plantin in 1583. It is certainly a very decorative stamp, but I must confess to preferring to it the simple inscription 'William' and 'Mildred Cicyll' on a binding which entered the Museum with the old Royal Library. In the present collection a little Lyons Virgil printed by Gryphius in 1571, though with a decorative instead of an heraldic stamp, bears the initials, 'W.P.,' of an English owner, a book-plate of 'The Right Honble. Robert James Ld Petre, Thorndon in Essex,' combined with a manuscript note, dated 1589, enabling us to identify W. P. with William Petre the second Baron (1575-1607). The note, apparently written when Petre was fourteen years old, records that the book was acquired by exchange with a certain Dominus Bigge.
ARMS OF LORD BURLEIGH
Passing to the seventeenth century, we may notice first two books which bear the Towneley arms, Nichols's translation of Thucydides printed at London in 1550, and the 'Scholia in quatuor Evangelia' of Lyons, 1602. The arms are stamped in silver instead of the more usual gold, and alone of all the book-stamps with which I am acquainted they bear a date, that of the year 1603. Readers familiar with Mr. Hardy's excellent little treatise on Bookplates may remember that the Towneley plate which forms its frontispiece bears the date 1702, just a century later. The two marks of ownership are really, however, separated by a somewhat smaller interval, for while 1702 is no doubt the date of the plate (such dated plates being unusually common at the beginning of the eighteenth century), the 1603 of the book-stamp is probably the birth-date of Christopher Towneley, the antiquary, who was born at Towneley Hall, Lancashire, on 9th January 1603, old style.
TOWNELEY ARMS
AUGUSTINE VINCENT'S BADGE
