The Collected Library, Including Americana and Early Photography

Lord North's Copy

London: Printed for F(rancis).C(oles). and T.B., 1641. First edition. From the library of British Prime Minister Frederick North, Lord North, and with his armorial book-plate on front paste-down. Small 4to. (i), 4, 6-8 pp. Illustrated with a woodcut depiction of Cheapside Cross on title-page, as well as a folding woodcut at bottom of p. 4. Three-quarter brown calf over brown paper-covered boards, black calf spine label, stamped in gilt, spine dry and chipped, joints and extremities worn, boards rubbed; all edges trimmed; book-plate of Naomi Wood on front free endpaper; Lord North's armorial crest sometime illustrated in ink on front blank; faint old owner's inscription in pencil on verso of front blank; spotting to text. BM-302; ESTC R15630

Bound with:

Lovedeay, Samuel
An Answer to the Lamentation of Cheap-side Crosse. Together with the Reasons why so many doe desire the downfall of it, and all such Popish Reliques. Also the downfall of Antichrist
London: Printed for T.A. (ca. 1642). First edition. 12mo. (ii), 6 pp. Illustrated with same woodcut on title-page. Spotting to text; small singe hole at top of A4. BM-303; ESTC R19606

A rare group of two religious tracts published at the advent of the English Civil War and concerning the controversial Catholic Cheapside Cross monument. Located in the financial center of London, Cheapside Cross was one of 12 large ornate medieval monuments erected at the close of the 13th century in memory of Eleanor of Castille, the first wife of King Edward I, and that marked the resting locations along the funeral procession that transported her body from Waltham Abbey to Westminster Abbey.

During the medieval period, the Eleanor Crosses were symbols of royal authority and Catholicism, with Cheapside in particular being the site of royal parades, festivities, and public punishment. Following the Reformation in England it became a flashpoint of contention and violence between Catholics and Protestants, and was targeted by Puritans who viewed it as idolatrous. In the years before the English Civil War a pamphlet war erupted in celebration and opposition to the monument. The first work, The dolefull Lamentation, is an anti-Puritan tract upbraiding the religious radicals who have defaced the Cross and sought its destruction, with the final section being a first-person personification of the Cross under the name Jasper Cross, who describes the assaults against them. The second tract by Samuel Loveday is an impassioned Puritan rejoinder, attacking the Cross as a site of idolatry and evil.

In 1643, with the country now mired in civil war, Parliament emerged as a Protestant stronghold and bastion of political reform. On April 24 they established a committee "for the demolition of monuments of superstition and idolatry", and three days later ordered the London alderman to dismantle the Cheapside Cross. On May 2, before a crowd of several thousands, the Cross was destroyed, with its lead melted down to create bullets for parliamentarian soldiers--an act that perhaps Lord North understood was echoed during his term as Prime Minister 130 years later, when American revolutionaries in New York tore down the statue of King George III in Bowling Green and melted it down to make bullets for use against the British redcoats.

Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732-92), was a British statesman, 12th Prime Minister of England, from 1770-82, as well as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Popularly known as Lord North, he led Great Britain through most of the American Revolution, but resigned after their defeat at Yorktown. He is remembered as the "man who lost America."

Rare to auction. According to RBH, this is the first copy offered since 1962 (the fifth overall going back to 1922). ESTC locates 16 copies of the first title, including only five in the United States, and locates only seven copies of the second title, including only four in the United States.