Add MS 71449

DANIEL KING: 'Severall Monuments of the . . . Family of the Veres Earles of Oxford', etc.; March 1653-early 18th cent. Partly autograph, and imperfect. Items 1 and 3 bear the signature (ff. 4, 37) of Brian Fairfax, with the pencilled numbers '38-1' (f.1) and '38 2' (f. 37) respectively. Tipped in at the beginning is a letter (f. v) of the bookseller Thomas Rodd to Sir Frederick Madden, with annotations by the recipent, 16 Aug. 1826, offering item 1 for purchase. Item 3 appeared as lot 149 in the sale-catalogue of the Leeds Castle library, 10 Jan. 1831, and as lot 1142 in the bookseller Thomas Thorpe's Catalogue of Manuscripts, 1832. All three were subsequently acquired by Henry Pelham Pelham-Clinton (d.1851), 4th Duke of Newcastle: see De Ricci's typewritten catalogue of the Clumber MSS, nos. 324, 325, where the old inventory-number of item 3 is stated to have been, as on f. 37, 'No. 643'. See also the printed extract (f. iii) from Sotheby's sale-cat. of the Clumber Library, 14-16 Feb. 1938, lot 1035, sold to Fletcher. Later owned by Albert Kirby, 12th Baron Fairfax (d.1964), whose armorial bookplate (f. ii) occurs inside the front cover. Purchased from Sotheby's, 13 Dec. 1993, lot 474.

Paper: ff.v+51. Binding of mottled calf, gilt-tooled, by Henry Stamper (fl. 1860-1866), bearing on the upper cover the arms of the Pelham-Clintons, Dukes of Newcastle, and lettered on the spine 'D. King. Monuments of the Earls of Oxford 1653' and 'Descent of Anne de Vere Lady Fairfax'.

The present volume comprises three separate tracts:::

1. ff.1-32v. King's scale line-drawings of the monumental effigies, tombs, memorial brasses and heraldic glass in Earls Colne Church and Priory and in Heveningham Church and Castle. These are followed by hatchments of the arms of Anne (Vere), wife of Thomas, 3rd Baron Fairfax, and of their only child Mary, later Duchess of Buckingham, to whom King dedicated his 'Miniatura' (Add. 12461). Two titlepages give the artist's name simply as 'D. K'., the first (f. 2), formerly cancelled by a paste-down, being dated 31 March 1653, and the second (f. 4) 12 March 1653 [i.e. 1654]. Early 18th cent. copies of these sketches are found in Add. 27348, ff. 26-34, and 27350, ff. 23, 24: for notices see F. H. Fairweather, 'Colne Priory, Essex, and the Burials of the Earls of Oxford', Archaeologia, vol. LXXXVII (1938), pp. 275-295; J. Enoch Powell, 'The Riddles of Bures', Essex Archaeology and History, vol. VI (1974), pp. 90-98; and Geoffrey Probert, 'The Riddles of Bures Unravelled', ibid., vol. XVI (1984-5), pp. 53-64.

2. ff. 33-36v. Anonymous 'Observations on the Drawings Contain'd in This Book'; early 18th cent. Another draft is Add. 27348, ff.21-25v.

3. ff. 37-51v 'A short discourse of ye Descent of . . . Lady Anne Vere . . .'; mid-17th cent. Imperfect at end.