A curious succession of bookplates connected one with another is shown in two volumes before me. One work is “Vindiciæ Pietatis: ... By R. A. London: Printed in the year 1663.” The other is a book as far asunder as the poles. It is catalogued “Des Livres, Estampes & Desseins, du Cabinet.... Appartenent Au Baron Tessin, Marèchal de la Cour du Roy & sur-intendent de Batiments & Jardins Royaux de Suede.... Stockholm, 1712.”
The first volume has three bookplates, all armorial. First, the plate of Sir William Lee, Knight, with the motto “verum atque decens.” “Mutlow, sculp., York Street, Covent Garden.” Then a smaller and different plate, but by the same engraver, and with the same arms, crest, and motto, but pertaining to “William Lee Antonie, Esqʳ.” After this, again, comes the third ex libris in the book, and this is without name engraving, but is evidently Lee quartering Fiott.
John Fiott, a London merchant who died at Bath in 1797, married Harriet, second daughter of William Lee, of Totteridge Park, Hertfordshire. Their son John, fifth wrangler at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1805, and LL.D. in 1816, assumed, in 1815, by royal licence, the name of Lee under the will of William Lee Antonie, of Colworth House, Bedfordshire, his maternal uncle. At the same time he acquired the estates of Colworth in Bedfordshire, and Totteridge Park, Hertfordshire. He lived eighty-four years, and in 1863, at the age of eighty, he was admitted a barrister of Gray’s Inn. Between 1807 and 1810 he held a travelling bachelorship from Cambridge, and made a learned tour through the Ionian Isles and other parts. In 1828 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and he left valuable collections to the Society. He was even more interested in science than in antiquities, and in 1830 built an observatory in the south portico of Hartwell House. Leaving no children, his property passed to his brother, the Rev. Nicholas Fiott, who took the surname of Lee. The Lee crest is a bear with a chain.
Guillim has recorded: “Hee beareth Sable, a Beare passant, Argent.... The Shee Beare is most cruelly imaged against any that shall hurt her yong, or dispoile her of them: as the Scripture saith, in setting forth the fierce anger of the Lord, that he will meete his aduersaries, as a Beare robbed of her whelps. Which teacheth vs how carefull Nature would haue vs to bee of the welfare of our children, sith so cruell beasts are so tender harted in this kind.”
“Vindiciæ Pietatis: ... By R. A. London: Printed in the year, 1663.” The author of this precious volume was Richard Alleine, born in 1611 at Ditcheat, in Somersetshire. In 1641 he became Rector of Batcombe in the same county. The Dictionary of National Biography is for once induced to warmly clothe the dry skeleton, with which it has usually tried to make us content. “For twenty years Alleine
remained at Batcombe, and was idolized by his parishioners.... Vindiciæ Pietatis ... refused license by Sheldon ... was published without ... was rapidly bought up and did much to mend this bad world. Roger Norton, the royal printer, caused a large portion of the first edition to be seized on the ground of its not being licensed, and to be sent to the royal kitchen. But, glancing over its pages, he was arrested by what he read, and on second thoughts it seemed to him a sin that a book so holy and so saleable should be killed. He therefore bought back the sheets, says Calamy, for an old song, bound them, and sold them in his own shop.”
The closing lines of Vindiciæ Pietatis are: “But by the grace of God, whilst God is a God of holinesse, whilst holinesse is the Image and Interest of God, whilst these words of the Lord, Be ye holy, follow holinesse, live righteously, soberly, and godly in this present world, whilst these and the like words of the Lord, stand unrepeal’d, by the Grace of God, I will be a Friend, an Advocate, a Confessor, a Practitioner of Holinesse to the end of my days. This is my resolution, and in this resolution I commit myself to God, and so come on me what will.”