Foxes and Firebrands

Full title: Foxes and Firebrands: or, A specimen of the danger and harmony of Popery and Separation. Wherein is proved from undeniable Matter of Fact and Reason, that Separation from the Church of England is, in the judgment of Papists, and by sad experience, found the most compendious way to introduce Popery, and to ruine the Protestant Religion. The Second Edition: In Two Parts

8vo. pp. [16], 70; pp. [8], 154. Signatures: A-P⁸ Q⁴ (A1 blank). Bound in 18^th-century calf. Tooled gilt spine with red panel. Errata corrected in an early hand. With the (anonymous) armorial bookplate of Col. Barrington Price of Beckett, Shrivenham, Berkshire. In this edition, line 11 of title page has “judgment;” line 14 of title page has “malorum.”

First edition, one of two simultaneous issues (both have the same uncorrected errata). The ‘first part’ of the present volume is not so much a ‘second edition’ of Nalson, but a recasting by Ware, using Nalson's slightly more credible authority to pass off more fictions than before (see Bib# 4102884/Fr#393 of this collection). But the main element is the much longer "second part," where Robert Ware's most celebrated forgery initiates the volume. Contains, among other, new forgeries by Ware, the first printing of the celebrated address by Archbishop Cranmer to Edward VI, at his coronation in 1547, which took in John Strype and virtually every Reformation historian until Diarmaid MacCulloch in 2011 (“Foxes, Firebrands, and Forgery: Robert Ware’s Pollution of Reformation History,” Historical Journal, 54, 2, pp. 307–46) – and MacCulloch himself had been victimized in his Thomas Cranmer, A Life (New Haven, CT, 1996). See D. Wing (ed.), Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641–1700. 4 vols. New York, 1982-98 (2^nd ed.), N105.

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