An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the first Times till the Reign of Edward the third. [- The Continuation of an Historicall Discourse of the Government of England, until the end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. With a Preface, being a Vindication of the ancient way of Parliaments in England. By Nath. Bacon of Grays-Inn, Esquire.]   London: for Matthew Walbancke at Garys-Inn-Gate, 1647 [i.e. 1672]

[BACON (Nathaniel), using notes left by John Selden].].

About this Item

Second (so-called "Secret") Edition. Small 4to (190 x 145mm). 2 Parts. [12], 323, [14]; [24], 307, [9] pp. A little minor spotting in places. Contemporary mottled calf, covers ruled in blind, manuscript paper label to the spine, marbled edges (joints and edges rubbed, some wear to the spine, endleaves browned by the turn-ins, paper spine-label darkened). "London: for Matthew Walbancke at Grays- | Inn-Gate. 1647." [i.e. London: for John Starkey c. 1672 or 1677]   "This [scarcity of the first edition] occasion'd the private Reprinting of it in the year 1672, which as soon as the Government perceived, they Prosecuted both the Publisher and the Book so violently, that many hundreds of the Books were seized and burnt; ." - John Starkey, bookseller, preface to the 1689 folio edition.   Wing B349. Entered by ESTC under John Selden. This attribution is based on a statement by the publisher John Starkey in the preface to the 1689 edition: "It was well known to, and owned by, the late Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, who was one of the Executors of the Great and learned Mr. Selden, that the Ground-work was his, upon which Mr. Bacon raised this Superstructure, which hath been and is so well esteem'd, that it is now again made publick, by John Starkey."   Although he is only named on the title to the Continuation (Part 2) and then in a way that could suggest he only wrote the preface, it is certain that the book was written not by Selden but by Nathaniel Bacon (1593-1660), presbyterian MP for Cambridge University in the Long Parliament from 1645 (briefly excluded in Pride's 'Purge' in December 1648).   Joseph A. Dane has unravelled the complictaed story of this edition in his essay, "Seized, Burnt, and Variant: Bibliographical Note on Nathaniel Bacon, 'An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England' [1672]", in PBSA, Vol. 102/1 (March 2008), p. 95-102. This is the original issue of the ?1672 reprint of the 1647-51 first edition with the first printings of sheets A-D of Part 1 and sheets C-D of Part 2. Dane concludes that only those sheets were seized by the authorities and burnt, not the "many hundreds" of copies of the complete book that was suggested by Jghn Starkey in 1689. These sheets all had to be reprinted. Documents relating to the printing. Document sin the State Papers relating to the printing all date to 1677. The title is ESTC's setting (A), sheets B-C are in setting (2) and sheet D in setting (b) and the book equates to Dane's issue 1 (of 2) before the first three sheets of part 1  part 2    Bacon's Historicall Discourse is one of the key texts of 17th Century radical republicanism, a danger to the state after the Restoration, and a foundation-stone of the so-called 'Whig Interpretation of History' which sought to find historical precedents for an anti-monarchical system in vestiges of an ancient pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon constitution. Janelle Greenberg, in an excellent analysis of the book in her entry for Bacon in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, wrote:   "But Bacon's greatest service to anti-Stuart causes came in the form of a political tract entitled An Historical Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England, which was probably written using notes collected by John Selden. . Continually republished well into the eighteenth century, when it won the praise of the elder William Pitt, An Historical Discourse was secretly reprinted in 1672, in 1682 at the time of the exclusion crisis, in 1689 at the revolution, again in 1739, and by 1750 in a fifth edition. So fearful were the royalists of Bacon's message that Charles II's government attempted to suppress it by prosecuting the radical printer John Starkey, perhaps a member of the Green Ribbon Club, who dared to publish it. . Charles II and his advisers were right to be scared, for Bacon's An Historical Discourse argued with unrelenting force an anti-royalist ideology of enormous persuasive power. This was the radical ancient constitutio.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The First Part. From the first Times till the Reign of Edward the third. [- The Continuation of an Historicall Discourse of the Government of England, until the end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. With a Preface, being a Vindication of the ancient way of Parliaments in England. By Nath. Bacon of Grays-Inn, Esquire.] London: for Matthew Walbancke at Garys-Inn-Gate, 1647 [i.e. 1672]
• Binding: Soft cover