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Estimate: $ 600 - $ 800
William of Newburgh (1136-1198) Rerum Anglicarum Libri Quinque.
Antwerp: Gulielmus Silvius, 1567.
First edition, octavo, printer's woodcut device to title page; contemporary ownership inscription of Robert Spenser on ffep, with two signatures noting ownership and his motto, "Gaudet patientia ducis"; final blank leaf inscribed with lengthy twenty-five line inscription titled, "Supplementum capitis, Quomodo Patriarcha infecto negotio repatriavit, praecedentis capite decimo tertio libri tertii e ms." in a neat early hand; contents nicely preserved, bound in full contemporary limp parchment, becoming slightly detached from textblock, fragments of pink silk ties visible inside front board, other scattered contemporary marginalia, 6 x 3 7/8 in.
William of Newburgh was the Canon of the Augustinian Priory of Newburgh in Yorkshire. Ernald Abbot of Rievaulx requested that William write a history of England covering the period from just before the Norman Conquest through to their own era. William collected accounts from his monastic contemporaries, including monks who lived at Rievaulx, Fountains and Byland Abbeys, along with additional material gleaned from other religious from York and Durham. No autograph manuscript has survived from William of Newburgh's period. The British Library retains an almost complete near-contemporary version whose lacks are supplemented by a 13th century manuscript held at Lambeth Palace. This first edition, presumably prepared by scholarly Dutch printer Willem Silvius (1520-1580), is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
