Beschreibung:

Milles (Thomas). The Custumers Alphabet and Primer. Conteining, Their Creede or Beliefe in the true Doctrine of Christian Religion. Their Ten Commandementes, or Rules of Civill life and Conversation daily grace, general confession, speciall supplication and forme of prayers. Togither with a pertinent answere to all such ... would faine perswade others, that, the bringing home of traffique must needes decay our shipping, [London, William Jaggard?], 1608, 44 pages, signatures A-L2, title with woodcut decorative border, two woodcut head-pieces, and two woodcut initials, with author's manuscript annotations, underlining and manicules in brown ink to text, some soiling to title and final leaf, light waterstain to final few leaves, two blank leaves at front and rear, without pastedowns, later bookplate of Caroline Bishop to verso of front board, contemporary full calf, triple blind fillet border to each cover, lettered in gilt to upper centre of front cover EDWARD∗GWYNN, and E G to rear, board-edges with gilt fillet tooling, red and yellow edges to text leaves, upper joint partly cracked, a little wear to head and foot of spine with minor old repairs, folio (29 x 20 cm) (Qty: 1) Provenance: From the library of Edward Gwynn, a lawyer who formed a major library of 16th- and early-17th-century English and Latin texts, including the famous volume of nine Shakespeare Quartos bound together in contemporary binding, which was sold by Rosenbach to the Folger Library in 1919 for $100,000. Little is known of Gwynn, but he was probably born circa 1590, and entered Middle Temple in November 1610. From 1626 he lived with his close friend Alexander Chorley in a house within the gardens of Furnivall's Inn, off Holborn in London. After his death, his library was bequeathed to Alexander Chorley, and was subsequently dispersed. Around 200 books from his library have now been traced, including 50 in Marsh's Library in Dublin, 26 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 23 at Cambridge and 31 at Oxford. An ongoing list tracing all copies of books from Gwynn's library is available on the Folger Library website.The calf binding offered here conforms to the characteristic style used by Gwynn, with the name Edward Gwynn stamped in gilt capitals to the upper cover, and initials E G to the lower cover. See Liam Sims, Edward Gwynn and his Bindings, posted on Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog on 4 July 2018. ESTC S114606; STC 17927. Thomas Milles (circa 1550-1626), a customs official, intelligence agent and antiquary from Ashford in Kent, was the author of works on economic policy, free trade, religious controversy, as well as The Catalogue of Honor (1610). His publications, almost all of which are exceedingly rare, are idosyncratic due to the author's characteristic addition of manuscript marginal annotations, added by him to virtually all copies. Moreover, these manuscript additions and glosses vary from one copy to another, suggesting that Milles saw his printed publications as subject to ongoing revision. In the present copy, almost every page contains some form of correction, added note or elucidation, underlining or manicules (a pointing hand or finger). As 'Customer of Sandwich' in Kent, he was involved in intercepting foreign agents and correspondents and was employed in unravelling numerous plots of the period. This also gave him the opportunity to observe England's chronic shortage of precious metals, and the unfair monopoly exercised by the Merchant-Venturers based in London. Milles advocated free trade through staple ports, which gave designated ports the right to trade the cargo of merchant ships passing through their own port.