Books and Manuscripts

Penn, William
England’s Present Interest Discover’d with Honour to the Prince, and Safety to the People…
(London): Printed in the Year 1675. Second edition (with Penn’s name on title-page). 4to. (vi), 62 pp.; including front blank. Gatherings stitched as issued, small remnants of front and rear wrapper present; ownership inscription on front blank, “England, present Interest Consider'd Joseph Gowthwait Eis Liber Anno Domi 1759"; contemporary ownership signature at bottom of title-page, “William Phillipps Book”; wear and short closed tears along text edges; dampstaining in gutter and bottom corner of pp. 31-41; scattered light wear to text; in quarter brown morocco fall-down-back box. Sabin 59693; Smith, Friends’ Books, II, p. 293; Church 637; ESTC R23118 (locating 17 institutions with copies)

Rare copy of William Penn’s essay on religious toleration and the destructive impact of religious persecution under English law. This second edition, printed the same year as the first, was written by Penn in the first half of the 1670s during his explosive output of essays penned in response to increased Quaker persecution. The essay addresses the consequences of the retraction of Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1673--which had afforded some religious toleration to Catholics and Protestant nonconformists--and the implementation of the Test Act, which required all public servants to swear an oath of loyalty to the crown and their participation in Anglican religious rites--both anathema to Quaker beliefs. Seeking to show how England's religious laws eroded Englishmen’s rights, Penn “traces the history and progress of civil liberty in England from the earliest times, showing that it existed long before the Reformation, and had no necessary connection with the established church.” (Janney, The Life of William Penn, p. 118). Penn contrasts what he calls fundamental and superficial laws to argue that Quakers, by following their conscience outside of the established Church of England, did not forfeit their rights as Englishmen, and asserts that a government that tolerates a multitude of religious sentiments is strengthened as a whole.

Rare to auction, this is the first copy to be offered since 1980.