The Bacon Family Bible, with Some Competent Original Calligr...

Hammer

€3,600

The Bacon Family Bible, with Some Competent Original Calligraphy

[The Holy Bible, conteynyng the olde Testament, and the Newe …] London, Christopher Barker, 1578. Reversed calf with gilt tooling featuring the letter B, birds and snails.  39 x 24 cm. Lacks general title, prelims (begins with Cranmer’s Prologue), and final pages (after letter F of 2nd index). Full engraved title page to New Testament. Woodcuts, especially of the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple (Exodus, I Kings, Ezekiel). Full page woodcut at OT f. 349 “describing the forme of the Temple & citie restored”. Map of places mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles at NT f. 65. Device of Christopher Barker as colophon.

See A.S. Herbert, Historical Catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible 1525-1961 (L. & N.Y. 1968), no. 155 (p. 87).

At the end of the Prologue is written Cranmer’s Latin epitaph by Walter Haddon, followed by the name “Thomas Buttes” and the motto “Soyes sage et simple / Be wyse and playne”. Buttes has also written his name and motto on other pages, and has filled two blank pages with text, all in his graceful calligraphy, The first contains the metrical prayer against vice by Frances, Lady Abergavenny (1530?-1576?), followed by the Lord’s Prayer in metrical form composed as an acrostic on Buttes’s name. The second contains the prologue and text of the alleged Epistle of St Paul to the Laodiceans, followed by an eleven-line metrical prayer to Jesus Christ.

The names Nicholas Bacon, Anne Bacon and Butts Bacon are also written in various places.

Thomas Butts (1514-1592), of Great Ryburgh, Suffolk, the original owner of this bible, was the second of three sons of Sir William Butts of Barrow, Suffolk (1486-1545), court physician to Henry VIII and a close associate of Archbishop Cranmer. In 1536 he participated in Richard Hore’s voyage to Newfoundland - and survived to tell the story to Richard Hakluyt. He and his brothers married the three daughters of Henry Bures of Acton, Suffolk. Only the youngest, Edmund, had issue – a daughter Anne, who evidently inherited the bible.  She married in 1564 Sir Nicholas Bacon (c1540-1624), eldest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510-1579), Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and half-brother of the statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon. He was created Baronet Bacon of Redgrave, Suffolk in 1611 – the first person to hold this new title. Butts Bacon, whose name is also written on a page, was their seventh son. He was created in 1627 Baronet Bacon of Mildenhall, Co Suffolk.  (1)

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