ALEXANDRI NEVYLLI ANGLI, DE FURORIBUS NORFOLCIENSIUM KETTO DUCE, liber unus. Eiusdem Norvicus.

NEVILLE, Alexander.

Edité par Londini ex officina Henrici Binnemani typographi. Anno salutis humanæ, 1575

A propos de cet article

4to (190 x 135mm), pp. [xvi], 156; [xii], 207, [13]; with the original blank leaf b4, but without the two genealogical tables occasionally present; full-page woodcut armorials on verso of title page to both parts; title page cut at head, not affecting the printed text but presumably to remove an early inscription; sig. R in its original uncancelled state; a fine, fresh copy in contemporary limp vellum, spine finely lettered in ink, in an early italic hand. First edition. Two texts by the Tudor writer and Latinist Alexander Neville (1544-1614), who was secretary to Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. and then to his successors Edmund Grindal and John Whitgift. The first part recounts the story of Kett's Rebellion in the summer of 1549, which briefly took the city of Norwich before the rebel army was defeated by the Earl of Warwick in late August. it remained, for the English establishment, an awful warning about the dangers of civil war. This work is prefaced by a Latin elegy for Parker (who died the year this book was published), by Neville; two similar poems by 'G.A.', and two poems in praise of Neville by Thomas Drant (d. 1578), who was the translator of Horace but, perhaps more importantly, also domestic chaplain to Edmund Grindal, as Archbishop of York. The book has a prefatory epistle to Parker, who died in May the same year; and a dedication to Grindal, dated late November 1575, when he was still at York but had been effectively promised promotion to Canterbury. The second part of the book, Norvicus (also with a Latin poem by Drant attached) is an account of Norwich itself not in verse, as ODNB has it, but in prose. It tells the history and antiquities of the city, and has appended a list of the Mayors and other officers from the reign of Henry IV onwards, with some notes of memorable events. This copy does not have the two leaves of genealogical tables, which are missing so often that one is tempted to describe them as additional to a few copies, rather than lacking in others. However, it does have the original state of leaves R2-3, which were later cancelled because they caused offence to the Welsh, in describing their troops as sheep-like: the offending passage begins on p. 132 (R2v), with 'Sedenim Kettiani rati' and continues onto the next page (R3r). Neville had two successive sets of cancels printed, and in May 1576 he further published an apology for the slur, Ad Walliae proceres apologia (STC 18477). STC 18478 (18478a and 18478a.5 note the two sets of cancels); Lowndes pp. 1661-2. Provenance. The Evelyn copy (although not from the original library of John Evelyn), sold at Christie's London in March 1978, lot 1073 (£90, Traylen).

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: ALEXANDRI NEVYLLI ANGLI, DE FURORIBUS NORFOLCIENSIUM KETTO DUCE, liber unus. Eiusdem Norvicus.
• Éditeur: Londini ex officina Henrici Binnemani typographi. Anno salutis humanæ
• Date de parution: 1575
• Édition: Edition originale
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