Taking pride of place at Dominic Winter’s September 11 auction is the third edition of Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia, published in 1555, the year of the author’s death, and bound for Queen Mary I.
Chris Albury, Books, Autographs, Manuscripts & Ephemera, Photography specialists at Dominic Winter, said he believed no books from Queen Mary’s library have ever come up for auction. Her small library was dispersed after her death and most of the books and manuscripts extant are in major British libraries and collections.
"Written in Latin it is a major history of England, this third edition adding a new final chapter to include the life of Mary’s father King Henry VIII," he said. "Vergil, who lived in England for many years, where he was involved with Anglo-papal diplomacy, began writing the work around 1506 with the encouragement of Henry VII. Polydore Vergil’s last-known letter is one of congratulation to Mary I upon her accession to the English throne, dated August 5, 1553, shortly after she had been proclaimed queen."
The folio volume has a later calf binding c. 1800 but with the original gilt-decorated panels bearing the royal arms and monogram ‘M R’ of Mary relaid. The border design is consistent with the workshop of the Medallion binder who worked from the end of King Henry VIII’s reign through to the early years of Queen Elizabeth I, or the equally anonymous King Edward VI and Queen Mary Binder, a London atelier active from about 1545 until at least 1558.
The text is red-ruled throughout, has a hand-coloured title vignette, some early marginalia on two pages and the bookplate of Francis Fortescue Turvile (1752-1839), an ancestor of the current owners. Bound in at the front of the book are four contemporary pen and ink and watercolour maps of England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland and France.
