[Rarebooks] fa: ROGER L'ESTRANGE - THE FREE-BORN SUBJECT or THE ENGLISHMANS BIRTHRIGHT 1680

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/m3hzuff

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Roger L'Estrange: The Free-born Subject: or, The Englishmans Birthright: Asserted against all Tyrannical Usurpations either in Church or State. London: Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in St. Pauls Church-yard, at the West-end, 1680. The second edition. Small 4to (19.5 cm); [2] + 30 pp. Wing L1249; ESTC R22084.

Despite its populist-sounding title, this pamphlet is in fact primarily an effort to convince "the government to suppress more rigorously public avowals of discontent" (DNB). Disbound from a nonce volume with remnants of the earlier binding on the spine; mild toning with a few small spots, otherwise quite clean and crisp; binding a bit tender but the leaves are still holding together.

Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704), was a publisher, editor, prolific pamphleteer and pugnacious controversialist, one of England's earliest true journalists and a key figure in the Restoration period. Above all, he was an arch-Royalist and Tory, his fortunes rising and falling with the House of Stuart throughout his long life. Exiled after the English Civil War, he flourished during the Restoration, starting two separate newspapers and receiving a royal appointment as Surveyor of the Imprimery, or censor of the press, a post in which he executed his duties with a ruthless zeal that did not endear him to everyone; he took a seat in Parliament as member for Winchester and was knighted by James II in 1685. With the Glorious Revolution and the coming of William III, however, he lost his influence and offices, was arrested several times, and eventually found it safer to recede from public life and devote his talents to translating foreign works.