Navigation and Commerce, their Original and Progress. Containing A succinct Account of Traffick in General; its Benefits and Improvements: Of Discoveries, Wars and Conflicts at Sea, from the Original of Navigation to this Day; with special Regard to the English Nation; Their several Voyages and Expeditions, to the Beginning of our late Differences with Holland; In which His Majesties Title to the Dominion of the Sea is Asserted, against the Novel, and later Pretenders

Evelyn, J[ohn]

Published by Printed by T[homas] R[ycroft] for Benj. Tooke, London, 1674

About this Item

First edition. London: Printed by T[homas] R[ycroft] for Benj. Tooke, 1674. Octavo (6 7/8" x 4 3/8", 175mm x 113mm). [Full collation available.] With a woodcut headpiece and initial to p. 1. Bound in contemporary dark brown calf with a double blind fillet border. The spine (rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down) is divided into seven panels by double gilt fillets. Gilt central ornament to each panel. Title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. Edges of the text-block marbled. Rebacked, with the original backstrip laid down. (Recently conserved; full report available.) Boards generally rubbed with a few scratches. Text-block good and bright. Armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield (South Library) dated to 1860 on the front paste-down. Blind-stamp of their armorial achievement to A2-4 and B1. John Evelyn (1620-1706) was the consummate XVIIc polymath. Historian, gardener, theologian, environmentalist, bibliophile, translator, cook; there was little on which Evelyn did not write. His diary, written over some six decades, brackets Pepys's. He also attained rather high positions at court, and that is what gave rise to the present work. Charles II charged him in 1670 to write an account of British naval dominance over the Dutch in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, although he never made it that far. In his usual expansive mode, Evelyn writes of ancient naval endeavors through to 1649. The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-1674) commenced while Evelyn was hard at work, and, by the time Evelyn had finished, England had lost and Charles was impelled to sign the second Treaty of Westminster. Written in a defiantly wartime spirit, Navigation and Commerce offended the Dutch so much that Charles, at the request of the Dutch ambassador, seized copies and presumably destroyed them. The survival of this copy (Pepys kept his too) is therefore rather remarkable. Evelyn was suitably miffed and did not continue the work. Pepys was to have continued the work, and in his letters continually pestered Evelyn for details (and reading lists, and general analysis of naval strategy) through the 1680's; Pepys's promised continuation does not survive to us. The book made its way to the South Library of Shirburn Castle (Oxfordshire), from 1716 the home of the Parkers, in 1721 created Earls of Macclesfield. The bookplate is dated 1860, which places it in the earldom of Thomas Augustus Wolstenholme Parker (the sixth earl, 1850-1896). Still in the Parker family, Shirburne Castle was built in the XIVc -- complete with moat and crenellations -- and renovated in the Georgian period. Its libraries were disbursed by Sotheby's London; the present item was lot 2654 in part VIII of that sale, 25 October 2006. Einaudi i p. 291; ESTC R8611; Goldsmiths 2078; Keynes, Evelyn 92; Kress 1358; Sabin 23028; Wing E3504.

Seller Inventory # 6JLR0037

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Navigation and Commerce, their Original and Progress. Containing A succinct Account of Traffick in General; its Benefits and Improvements: Of Discoveries, Wars and Conflicts at Sea, from the Original of Navigation to this Day; with special Regard to the English Nation; Their several Voyages and Expeditions, to the Beginning of our late Differences with Holland; In which His Majesties Title to the Dominion of the Sea is Asserted, against the Novel, and later Pretenders
• Publisher: Printed by T[homas] R[ycroft] for Benj. Tooke, London
• Publication Date: 1674
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First.
• Condition: Near fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Europe
  • History