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8vo. 5.75 x 9 inches. xxxvi + 328 pp. + [18]. Illustrated with portrait frontis. and 12 plates (including facsimiles) and a folding genealogical table and map at end. With half-title, bibliography and index. Bound in original maroon cloth, gilt, boards stained, spine a little faded and extremities bumped and worn. Deckle edges with top edge maroon. Some lower edge staining near beginning, otherwise clean inside. This elusive volume gives a fascinating insight into daily life in the country houses of East Kent during the early seventeenth century and the prelude to the Civil War. It prints 240 letters from the Oxinden family of Great Maydekin House, Barham, largely selected from Additional MSS, 27,999 and 28,000 in the British Museum (now in the British Library). Sir Henry Oxinden (1609-70) was born in Canterbury and educated at Wye and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, being admitted to Gray's Inn, 1632. He served on the parliamentary side during the siege of Arundel, 1643 but took no further part in the events of the 1640s. He published four volumes of verse and other works which attacked Puritan ministers and moved to support for Charles I and later the Restoration. He was ordained in 1661 but never took up residence in the Buckinghamshire living of Radnage, to which he had been presented. Over 200 titles from Oxinden's library survived to found Elham parish library and are now housed in Canterbury Cathedral Library. The editor of the letters, Dorothy Gardiner, nee Kempe (1873-1957) was educated in London and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She later worked at the LMH settlement in Lambeth, where she married the rector, and in 1917, moved with him to Canterbury, on his appointment as residential canon of the Cathedral. Her other published works included English Girlhood at School (1929), The Story of Lambeth Palace (1930) and Companion into Kent (1934). A further volume of the letters, The Oxinden and Peyton letters, 1642-1670 appeared in 1937. KENT LETTERS KENT. Seller Inventory # 20212
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