![[PARSONS, Robert (1546-1610)]. De persecutione anglicana libellus. Rome: Georgius Ferrarius for Bartholomaeus Grassus and Caesar Ferrarius, 1582.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2017/CKS/2017_CKS_14298_0207_000(parsons_robert_de_persecutione_anglicana_libellus_rome_georgius_ferrar044219).jpg?w=1)
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[PARSONS, Robert (1546-1610)]. De persecutione anglicana libellus. Rome: Georgius Ferrarius for Bartholomaeus Grassus and Caesar Ferrarius, 1582.
8º (165 x 106mm). Title with arms of the dedicatee, Cardinal Philippo Boncompagno, in red and black, 6 engraved plates, woodcut initials. (Browning and staining, particularly affecting quires D-F, E7 torn at bottom margin.) Contemporary flexible vellum (crinkled, ties lacking). Provenance: Pietro Paoli (inscription on verso of rear free endpaper).
Parsons was born at Nether Stowey but died in Rome, having joined the Society of Jesus in 1575. He and Edmund Campion went on a mission to England in 1580 but, unlike Campion who was martyred, he fled the following year, remaining in exile and becoming rector of the English College in Rome in 1597. This work was first printed at his Rouen press in 1581, disguised by a false Bologna imprint. In 1582 other editions followed at Paris, Ingolstadt and Rome, but this was the first edition to be illustrated with six plates showing the sufferings of English Catholics under Elizabeth I. These engravings were copied from woodcuts by Richard Verstegan on a broadsheet headed ‘Praesentis ecclesiae anglicanae typus,’ also printed in 1582. Adams P-354; A.F. Allison and D.M. Rogers, Literature of the English Counter-Reformation I, 876; BL/STC Italian Books p.233; De Backer/Sommervogel 708.
8º (165 x 106mm). Title with arms of the dedicatee, Cardinal Philippo Boncompagno, in red and black, 6 engraved plates, woodcut initials. (Browning and staining, particularly affecting quires D-F, E7 torn at bottom margin.) Contemporary flexible vellum (crinkled, ties lacking). Provenance: Pietro Paoli (inscription on verso of rear free endpaper).
Parsons was born at Nether Stowey but died in Rome, having joined the Society of Jesus in 1575. He and Edmund Campion went on a mission to England in 1580 but, unlike Campion who was martyred, he fled the following year, remaining in exile and becoming rector of the English College in Rome in 1597. This work was first printed at his Rouen press in 1581, disguised by a false Bologna imprint. In 1582 other editions followed at Paris, Ingolstadt and Rome, but this was the first edition to be illustrated with six plates showing the sufferings of English Catholics under Elizabeth I. These engravings were copied from woodcuts by Richard Verstegan on a broadsheet headed ‘Praesentis ecclesiae anglicanae typus,’ also printed in 1582. Adams P-354; A.F. Allison and D.M. Rogers, Literature of the English Counter-Reformation I, 876; BL/STC Italian Books p.233; De Backer/Sommervogel 708.
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