Add MS 78240

EVELYN PAPERS. Vol. LXXIII. The Book of Common Prayer; Imprinted at London by Robert Barker…And by the Assigns of John Bill. 1638. Printed in black letter. A calligraphic inscription, in Latin, commemorating the rescue of the volume ‘ipso horrendi facinoris die’ and its subsequent gift to Browne by ‘Isacius Heraldus’ [i.e. Isaac Hérault] is transcribed on an inserted leaf before the title-page in the hand of John Evelyn’s amanuensis Richard Hoare; a further copy is in Add. MS 78234. For Hérault, see Notes and Queries, 6^th Series, XII, 1885, pp. 250-1, and for a transcript of the text Notes and Queries, 4^th Series, III, 1869, p. 382. Immediately below is a note in Evelyn’s hand, reading ‘This is the Booke which Charles the first M.B. did use upon the scaffold. xxx Jan: 1649, being the day of his glorious Martyrdom’. Cf. an exemplar of Barker’s and Bill’s small quarto common prayer book of 1639 (BL press-mark Eve. a. 131) which carries an ex libris inscription of Mary Evelyn, 1651, copied in Hoare’s hand, and incorporates manuscript notes by her father.

Folio, with titlepage in red and black; partly black letter; unpaginated but signed consecutively throughout and ending on [Dd4]; with ‘The form and manner of making and consecrating bishops…’ (A⁸, B⁶), of which the final leaf [B6 recto] is blank, and followed by an unsigned leaf containing on the recto prayers to be said ‘Upon every Obit-Day; or, when any Companion of the Order [of the Garter] is present at Divine Service…’. Contemporary binding of black morocco, crudely gilt-stamped with the royal arms, [? re-attached and] furnished with 18^th cent. endpapers; foredges gilt. 285 x 195mm. Found loose with the volume are a ribbon of blue silk that formerly served as bookmarker, three copies of a printed exhibition label, circa 1867, for the book while at Wotton, which asserts that ‘There are stains on the Prefaces of the Communion Office, said to be from the King’s Blood’, and a printed facsimile page, of the entry for Thursday 31 March 1659 from a parliamentary dairy.