[Rarebooks] fa: FRANCIS GODWIN, Bishop of Llandaff - CATALOGUE OF THE BISHOPS OF ENGLAND 1615 - w/ Contemporary Llandaff, Wales Provenance

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 4. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/yyxup2jr

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Francis Godwin: A Catalogue of the Bishops of England, since the first planting of Christian Religion in this Island, Together with a briefe History of their lives and memorable actions, so neere as can be gathered out of antiquity. Whereunto is prefixed a discourse concerning the first conversion of our Britaine unto Christian Religion. By Francis Godwin now Bishop of Landaff. London: Printed [by Eliot's Court Press] for Thomas Adams, 1615. First edition thus. Small 4to (19 cm) in later, but not recent, paneled calf, rebacked, gilt-lettered spine label; [12], 701, 698-699 [i.e. 703], [1] pp.; woodcut decorations and initials. ESTC S103174; Wing 11938.

With the ownership inscription of Thomas Williams, dated 17 October 1623, suggesting that the book was a gift from the author's successor as bishop of Llandaff: "Ex Dono... Theophili, Laudauenssis Episcopi (Theophilus, bishop of Landaff)." This would be Theophilus Field (1574-1636), who, through the interest of the Duke of Buckingham, was named bishop of Llandaff, in Wales, in 1619, Godwin having been translated to Hereford in 1617. This fact is noted in a ms. annotation, presumably in Williams's hand, at the end of the section on the bishops of Llandaff. Williams has also written a number of similar corrections and annotations in ink at other points throughout the text (some of which have been clipped in a later rebinding). That the name "Williams" was, and is, a common one in Wales makes the provenance all the more likely.

Binding with wear to the extremities, front joint cracked with the front board loosened but holding; bookplate removed from front paste-down and a few small inkstamps in the margins of the leaves (no other library markings); title-page trimmed a bit close at the top, leaves toned with occasional scattered light spotting and damp-staining, penciled annotations on the endpapers and occasionally in the text by a later hand, one leaf (Mm4) torn with some loss to the text, else quite clean and sound.

A highly partisan, but still very readable work, in which "Godwin endeavoured 'out of a puritanical pique' to bring a scandal on the catholic bishops, and to advance the credit of those prelates who, like himself, were married after the Reformation period" (DNB). First published in 1601, the Catalogue so pleased Queen Elizabeth that she immediately appointed Godwin bishop of Llandaff. This second, expanded edition contains "many additions," a new dedication to King James I, and a "Discourse concerning the first conversion of this Island of Britaine unto the Christian Religion." Francis Godwin (1562-1633) is probably best remembered today as the author of The Man in the Moone, written ca. 1620 but published posthumously in 1638, a book which many consider to be one of the earliest works of science fiction. (Of course, many Catholics probably felt that way about his Catalogue.)