“Three Thomases”: Tres Thomae, a Catholic work by Thomas Stapleton
Here is another text-searchable PDF file of an early modern text. Here’s the link. This is the second (1612) edition of Thomas Stapleton’s account of the lives of Thomas the Apostle, Thomas Beckett and Thomas More. The first edition was published in Douai in 1588. Somewhat neglected these days, Stapleton was a leading Catholic controversialist […]
ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚA [Basilika]. The Works of King Charles the Martyr
Another text-searchable PDF file of a seventeenth-century text. Here’s the link. This is the second (1687) edition of a folio publication, over 700 pages long, divided into two parts, with the option of viewing further subdivisions for convenience / speed of downloading. Although the book is billed as being Charles’s own work, John Gauden, Bishop […]
Literature and terrorism
The go-to guy for an understanding of the ways in which terrorism has been represented in literature is Peter C. Herman, author of Terrorism and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Unspeakable: Literature and Terrorism from the Gunpowder Plot to 9/11 (Routledge, 2019). Although his scope is broader than the early modern period, he devotes […]
Protestant / Catholic polemic: Lucius Cary (Viscount of Falkland), Thomas White and William Chillingworth
The 1660 edition of Lucius Cary’s Discourse of Infallibility (first published in 1646 ) is my latest book scan. There’s more interest these days in Cary’s mother, Elizabeth (1585–1639), the first woman writer known to have written a play. Elizabeth Cary’s literary career isn’t really relevant here, but she plays a part in the complex […]
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
Wentworth’s path from Lord Deputy of Ireland to the executioner’s axe is well enough known in its broad outlines, but with so many twists and nuances that it is hard to evaluate. The decisive change in his fortunes came when the king, Charles I, recalled him from Ireland and charged him with putting down the […]
Archbiship Laud: A History of the Troubles and Tryal
The scanning continues! I had some technical problems that needed dealing with, so I’m two or three months behind with the early modern book scans, but I’m back in production now. Henry Wharton’s 1695 edition of Laud’s account of his imprisonment and trial, published as A History of the Troubles and Tryal of the most […]
The Gunpowder-Treason: with a discourse of the manner of its discovery
Go straight to the scanned book Although this work was published many years after the events it describes, and its main content is reprinted, it also contains the first printing of a number of letters relating to the plot. It is not a scarce work, and there is at least one other online copy (in […]
A True Copy of the Journal of the High Court of Justice, for the Trial of K. Charles I.
This full-page frontispiece is prefaced by the following poem: These lines speak for themselves, describing “Albion” as “Three Nations doom’d t’eternal slavery”, symbolized by the figures crushed under the wheels of the hellish chariot that represents the Interregnum and Cromwell’s Protectorate. That gives a pretty clear idea of where this book is coming from. The […]
A 15th-century manuscript book of hours
Go straight to the scanned PDFs This week’s book scan is a bit different from my usual fare. It’s a manuscript, it’s from the 15th century, it’s not primarily related to suffering and – because of the limitations of OCR (optical character reader) software – it’s not text-searchable. But if you have any interest in […]
MAURUS SCOTT, CATHOLIC MARTYR (SCANNED DOCUMENT)
It’s a common enough tale, I suppose. Young man goes to Cambridge, studies law, goes to the inner Temple to complete his training, gets converted to Catholicism and ends up being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Maurus Scott was one of some 355 Catholics who were either put to death or died in prison […]