A Collection of Miscellanies: Consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses & Letters. Occasionally Written. The Second Edition Corrected.

NORRIS (John)

Published by London Printed for J. Crossley and Samuel Manship., 1692

About this Item

8vo, 183 x 115 mms., pp. [xvi], 467 [468 blank. 469 - 472 adverts], contemporary sheepskin, light brown labels; title-page off-setting on verso of previous leaf, joints slightly cracked, binding scratched, but a good copy inscribed in a contemporary hands on recto of front free end-paper, "The gift of Henry Milborne Esq/ to his Executor/ George Bonnett." With the book label Richard Luckett on the front paste-down end-paper. Luckett (1945 - 2020) was formerly Pepys Librarian and University Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature at Cambridge. The first edition of this work by the philosopher and clergyman John Norris (1657-1712) appeared in 1687, and at least three other editions, including this one, were published. Richard Acworth notes that "several of the essays in the Miscellanies express ideas that [Norris] developed further in his later writings. The Miscellanies also includes almost all of Norris's poetry. In the final poem he bids farewell to his muse, but he later composed two further poems, one in each part of his Theory of the Ideal World. The Miscellanies was to prove the most lastingly popular of all Norris's writings with the general public, and even in the nineteenth century it was reported that 'this is the most popular of all his works, and affords the picture of a truly amiable mind' …" (Oxford DNB). The beautiful seventeenth-century manuscript inscription, showing this to be a contemporary presentation copy of Norris's Miscellanies, reads, "The gift of Henry Milborne Esq / to his Executor / George Bonett". The words mark the volume as a gift at the end of the life of one of the more powerful, wealthy, yet shadowy figures of late seventeenth-century Wales: Henry Milborne or Milbourne, who was Recorder of Monmouth; the most influential magistrate of the region; a member of the Middle Temple, one of the four inns of Court in London, entitled to chambers; as well as steward and agent of the Duke of Beaufort, and a figure implicated in the Popish Plot. For his dates, Henry Milborne's Wikipedia article says he was born "circa 1600" and died "after 1692". But from his will, and the proving of the will, we know Milborne died between September 1692 and the next March, which would be either March 1692 (Old Style) or March 1693 (New Style). His long will is an important document of Monmouthshire history, and George Bonnett appears prominently within it as the nephew and the sole executor to his wealthy and powerful uncle Henry Milborne (the will is printed in its entirety in A. W. Hughes Clarke, ed., Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, volumme 3, fifth series (1918-1919), pp. 241-244). Current academic work references Milborne's importance as a frequent opponent of anti-Catholic policies in the region, and as an influential political operative in seventeenth-century Wales. In her book, Beaufort: The Duke and His Duchess, 1657-1715 (Yale UP, 2001), Molly McClain deems "Henry Milborne of Wonastow and Llanrhyddol" to be "one of the most influential men in north Monmouthshire" (p. 129). In Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester UP, 1995), edited by Susan Dwyer Amussen and Mark Kishlansky, it is noted that Milborne's contemporary John Arnold complained Milborne was an "undoubted papist," remarking that although he "only held lands worth £100 per annum in one county," he was yet "made justice of the peace in four" (p. 122). Wikipedia's article on one of Miborne's residences, Hilston House, calls him an "important 17th century magistrate of the county." Meaningful and mysterious, Milborne's gift of this book (of deeply philosophical meditations by the most mystical of the Cambridge Platonists), to his nephew and executor, George Bonnett, silkman of London, was probably among the last gestures he made at the end of his days. Seller Inventory # 10316

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Collection of Miscellanies: Consisting of ...

Publisher: London Printed for J. Crossley and Samuel Manship.

Publication Date: 1692

Edition: 1st Edition