Three discourses of Sr. Walter Ralegh. I. Of a War with Spain, and our Protecting the Netherlands. Written by the Command of King James I. in the First Year of his Reign, 1602. II. Of the Original, and Fundamental Cause of Natural, Arbitrary, and Civil War. III. Of Ecclesiastical Power. Published by Phillip Ralegh, Esq; his only Grandson

THE MACCLESFIELD COPY. First edition. London: for Benjamin Barker, 1702. Octavo (7 1/8" x 4 7/16", 181mm x 113mm). [Full collation available.] With an engraved portrait frontispiece (engraved by F.H. van Hove) as A1. Bound in contemporary sprinkled calf with a double blind fillet border. On the spine, three raised bands. Pressmark ("A./v.") in ink manuscript to a diamond-shaped paper label at the head, shelfmark ("6.") in ink manuscript to a diamond-shaped paper label at the tail. Scalloped roll to the edges of the boards. All edges of the text-block speckled red. A little splayed, with rubbing to the extremities and to the spine. Front board starting. Paste-downs lifted with the front paste-down lacking and the rear paste-down (now free) with a loss to the lower edge. Very mildly evenly tanned, with the odd spot of foxing. Altogether a clean copy with large margins. 1860 South Library (of Shirburn Castle) armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield completed in ink manuscript -- "178. B. 25." -- to the front inside board (i.e., after the paste-down had been lifted). Bookseller's code ("p/e") in ink manuscript to the front turn-in. Macclesfield blind-stamp to the portrait and to the title-page. Shelving from the spine repeated in ink manuscript on the rear paste-down ("Av6"). Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) had fingers in nearly every pot of the Elizabethan era. Of an obscure West Country origin, Raleigh was knighted by Elizabeth I in 1585 and became one of her most intimate courtiers. Come 1595, Raleigh set off in search of El Dorado (Manoa) but returned unsuccessful. The present set of treatises shows not the great voyager but the senior statesman, philosopher and Great Man of foreign affairs. From the penning of the first treatise to the publication of the present item -- the first edition of the first discourse; the previous two had been published in 1650 -- 100 years had elapsed. Thus the "war with Spain" -- the Eighty Years' War -- and the need to support Holland had shifted entirely; three Anglo-Dutch Wars had hardened enmity between the Dutch Republic and Britain, although by 1702 they were at peace. Raleigh's prognostications about Civil War were put to the test in the 1640's, and his meditations on ecclesiastical power (vis à vis Catholicism) came before a tumultuous century, including the banning of the Episcopacy, Congregationalism, the Restoration and finally the establishment by William III of the Church of England with tolerance of other Nonconformist and Catholic denominations. The involvement of Sir Walter's grandson Phillip suggests a desire to make money from family archives, though there may be a less cynical explanation: Elizabethan antiquarianism. As the Stuart dream of an American empire grew to be a reality, with thriving colonies along the East Coast, a nostalgia for the era's absolutism and wonderment naturally made its key figures interesting. From one of the celebrated libraries of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, England, accumulated from the early XVIIIc by generations of the Parker family, and sold (over successive sales) by Sotheby's in London. The first Earl of Macclesfield was Thomas Parker, 1st Baron Parker, made Viscount Parker, of Ewelm in the County of Oxford, and Earl of Macclesfield, in the County Palatine of Chester in 1716. He was Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench from 1710 to 1718 and Lord High Chancellor from 1718 to 1725. The present item was lot 2945 in the eighth part of their sale, 25 October 2006. Armitage 145; ESTC T50262; Sabin 67589. …