Macclesfield copy.- Parsons (Robert) The Cristian Directory, 'seauenth, and last Edition', title with 'IHS' woodcut device, woodcut initials, typographical ornaments, ruled in red throughout, very light browning, rust spot to M5, small rust hole to 2X7 affecting a couple of letters, handsomely bound in contemporary red morocco, gilt, covers with central gilt arms of Sir Kenelm Digby, spine gilt in compartments and with four raised bands, lettered in one compartment, the others with Digby cipher (KVD), small, neat and expert repairs to joint ends, lower cover with small worm trace to head, g.e., [STC 19354.9; Allison & Rogers 625], 8vo, [St Omer, English College Press], Printed with licence, 1633.

⁂ A devotional work by the mastermind of the English mission, and one of the most demonised of all Jesuits. Bound in the arms of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), courtier, alchemist, bibliophile and leading English Catholic intellectual of his day. The book was also in the possession of Thomas Wentworth, Lord Cleveland (1591-1667), a noted royalist, captured and imprisoned in the Tower from late 1651. A year before his release he presented this volume, with others, to Humphrey Paynter, presumably the surgeon of that surname who was similarly imprisoned at the time for Royalist attachments.

Provenance: Earl of Macclesfield ('North Library' bookplate); 'Cleaveland' (ink inscription to fore-margin of title); 'The Lord Cleveland gave this booke and some others unto Humphrey Paynter when the sayd Earl was a prysoner in the Tower of London July 1 1655' (ink inscription to front free endpaper); Shirburn Castle (embossed stamp to head of first three leaves).