The following is an instance of a bookplate printed for a special purpose. The block measures about five inches by two and a quarter, and represents an ornamental frame enclosing the following printed inscription:—
“Daily take Care to spend your Time and Breath
In right preparing for the Hour of Death.
So wish’d your deceas’d Friend,
S. Moore.”
It suits the size of the book into which it is pasted in its proper place inside the front cover. On the last page of the book is printed a list of “Some Books proper to be given at Funerals,” and lower down the page, as a good catalogue note: “We may say of a Book, given at Funerals, what the Divine Herbert says of a Verse. A Book may find him who a Sermon flies, and turn a Gift into a Sacrifice.”
The leaf before the title-leaf is engraved with the tomb of the author: “Edward Pearse, a servant of Jesus Christ. Obiit 1673: Ætat 40.” The title reads: “The Great Concern: or, a Serious Warning to a timely and Thorough Preparation for Death with Helps and Directions in Order thereunto. By Edward Pearse. John ix. 4.... Recommended as proper to be Given at Funerals. The twenty-eight Edition. London: Printed for R. Robinson, at the Golden Lion in St. Paul’s-Churchyard. 1735.”
The author, a Nonconformist Divine, matriculated as a servitor from St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1652, and graduated B.A. on 27th June, 1654. In June, 1657, he was appointed Morning Preacher at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. The Great Concern was reprinted as lately as 1840.
A good characteristic English, or shall we say Welsh, plate is that of “Morgan Thomas,” “Palmer sculpsit,” with a floral-wreath decoration. The arms were granted 8th September, 1768, to Thomas of Lettymaur, in Carmarthenshire. Rees Thomas of Lettymaur died in 1759, leaving three sons, one of whom was Morgan Thomas of Llanon, in the parish of Lettymaur. He, in 1768, married Frances, the only child of Henry Goring, of Frodley Hall, Staffordshire. Their grandson was Rees Goring Thomas of Llanon, and of Tooting, Surrey, who was High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1830. This family, besides having a wreath in their crest and flowers round their shield, perhaps had fine tastes, as the book in which I have this Morgan Thomas plate is a very beautiful piece of English dated binding. It is a 1660—Henry Hills and John Field—Bible, bound in black morocco, beautifully blindtooled in Mearne style, and with initials “M. M.” and date “1673” in the middle of each cover. The four outside corners of the binding are covered
with silver on which are engraved flowers similar to those designed on the leather.