Old Picture Books, With Other Essays on Bookish Subjects

by Alfred W. Pollard

ARMS OF RALPH SHELDON AND HIS WIFE

We come now to an interesting group of books, once in the possession of Ralph Sheldon, the seventeenth-century antiquary. The first of these bears not his own arms but those of Augustine Vincent, the Windsor Herald, which two years ago attracted attention from being found, stamped in blind, on the splendid copy of the first Folio Shakespeare presented to him by William Jaggard, one of its publishers.[28] In the present instance they are impressed in gold on Estienne de Cypres' 'Genealogies de soixante et sept tres nobles Maisons,' printed at Paris in 1586. Augustine Vincent died in 1626, and his son sold his books to Ralph Sheldon, who on his death in 1684 bequeathed his manuscripts to the College of Arms. The printed books apparently remained for some time in the possession of the family, for this volume bears a Sheldon book-plate, and Sir Wollaston Franks was able to purchase two other books with Ralph Sheldon's book-stamp, Campian's 'Historia Anglicana' (Douay, 1632), and the 'Prophecies' of Nostradamus (London, 1672). On both of these the Sheldon arms are quartered with those of Ralph's wife (Henrietta Maria, daughter of Thomas Savage, Viscount Rock Savage), and both books have written in them the motto, 'In Posterum,' apparently in Ralph's autograph. A third book, Greenway's translation of the 'Annals' of Tacitus (London, 1640), bears on its title-page the autograph of 'Geo. Sheldon,' and on the cover the Sheldon arms as here shown.

ARMS OF GEORGE SHELDON

The next two volumes we may note are Thomas Mason's 'Of the Consecration of Bishops in the Church of England' (1613), and the 'Works' of King James I. (1616), both of them bearing the Hatton arms. From their dates these must therefore have belonged not to Elizabeth's favourite, whose arms are figured in Mr. Fletcher's article, since he died in 1591, but to a son of his cousin of the same name, of Clay Hall, Barking. This third Christopher Hatton was baptized and probably born in 1605, and was a prominent man during the reign of Charles I., by whom he was created Baron Hatton in 1643. He was responsible for an edition of the Psalms with prayers attached (1644), which went by the name of Hatton's 'Psalter,' and was philosopher enough to be able to make himself happy with his 'books and fiddles' while a Royalist exile.

A few of these early seventeenth-century books possess bindings interesting for other reasons besides their marks of ownership. Thus, a fine Hebrew folio is decorated not only with the arms of John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, but with some striking examples of the handsome, if heavy, corner-pieces in vogue in the reign of James I. On a copy of Brent's 'History of the Council of Trent' the arms of Berkeley look all the better for being inclosed in a handsome scroll-work centrepiece. So again we find both fine cornerpieces and a good central stamp on the three volumes of the works of that learned divine William Perkins (London, 1612), which bear also the initials H. L. beneath a coronet. The owner was presumably Henry Yelverton, created Viscount Longueville in 1690, to whom also belonged a copy of the 1660 edition of More's 'Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness.' On the Perkins volumes his coroneted initials were plainly added as an afterthought, while a much smaller M. Y., inclosed in the cornerpieces as part of the original design, suggests that the volume had in the first instance belonged to Mary Yelverton, the wife of the Judge of Court of Common Pleas, who died in 1630.

The works of Perkins were popular in the seventeenth century, and Sir Wollaston Franks acquired another edition of them, that of 1626, bearing the arms of one of the descendants of Thomas Smythe, Farmer of the Customs in the reign of Elizabeth, whose arms combined with those of his wife, Alice Judde, were figured by Mr. Fletcher. The coat now in question may have belonged either to his grandson, Thomas, who was not created Viscount Strangford until two years after the publication of the book, or to the Viscount's brother, the ambassador to the Court of Russia, who fitted out an Arctic expedition, and has his munificence commemorated in the name of 'Smith's Sound.'

A copy of the 1617 edition of Spenser's 'Faery Queen,' bearing the initials M. C. beneath a coronet, offers another example of a mark of ownership attached by a descendant of the original possessor. Who M. C. was is explained by the pretentious inscription on a book-plate inside the cover, which proclaims itself the property of 'The Right Honb^le Mary, wife of Charles, Earle of Carnarvon & Sister of James, Earle of Abingdon.' The Earl of Carnarvon here named was the second earl, Charles Dormer, who died in 1709, and his countess was the daughter of Montague Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, by his second wife Bridget, Baroness Norreys of Rycote. This descent accounts for the inscription on the title-page, 'Norreys, 1647,' and we may conclude that the volume was at one time owned either by the Baroness Norreys or her first husband. The book-plate of the Countess of Carnarvon is here reproduced as presumably a rather early example of a lady's plate in the heraldic style. It certainly does not deserve the honour for its artistic merits, the design and engraving being as poor as the inscription is foolish.

BOOK-PLATE OF THE COUNTESS OF CARNARVON