ROMAN+FORGERIES

====//Roman Forgeries: Or a True Account of False Records Discovering the Impostures and Counterfeit Antiquities of the Church of Rome //====

By a Faithful Son of the Church [Thomas Traherne]  London: Printed by S. and B. Griffin, for Jonathan Edwin at the three Roses in Ludgate-Street, 1673.



AUTHOR and TEXT: Scholar and clergyman Thomas Traherne (1637–74) combined his passion for the church and his intellectual agility, along with a feisty temperament, to produce //Roman Forgeries//, his only printed work during a rather short lifetime. In the beginning of the book (written anonymously), Traherne explains that the publication was precipitated by an argument he had with a friend’s Roman Catholic cousin on the steps of the Bodleian Library. The disagreement began over what defined a martyr to the Catholic Church and “devolved into contention over the issue of the ancient documents on which church authority purportedly rested.” The heated exchange between the university students (Traherne received an MA from Brasenose College, Oxford in 1661) focused on various issues of doctrine, including papal authority, transubstantiation, purgatory, and the doctrine of merits. Traherne’s major thesis that the relevant manuscripts, housed at the Vatican, have been “corrupted, misused, or suppressed” to fit their aims is well presented; however, the “flippant” attitude of his fellow student certainly puts Traherne in a position of intellectual superiority. “//Roman Forgeries// builds on a conspiratorial theory of history, which goes hand in hand with the abusive tone of the work—in this respect atypical of Traherne’s poetry,” which was posthumously published (Poetry Foundation). The book is dedicated to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and patron of Traherne.



PRINTER: On the title page, the printer is listed as “S. & B. Griffin,” referring to Sarah Griffin and her son, Bennet. Sarah was one of a handful of female printers in seventeenth-century London, many who carried on the enterprises of their deceased husbands. She took over the business from her husband, Edward Griffin II, when he died in 1652. Prior to his death, Edward had run the printing establishment with his mother, Anne, who had taken over the shop when her husband (Edward Griffin I) had died (Plomer). Sarah is known to have printed several scientific books (including posthumous editions of Francis Bacon), poetry, almanacs, and religious treatises of which //Roman Forgeries// is one. It is interesting to note that Anne Griffin, Sarah’s mother-in-law, was threatened by Archbishop Laud for her printing an “anti-popish diatribe” in 1637 (Furdell 108).

BOOKSELLER: Jonathan Edwin was a bookseller in London whose establishment, Three Roses, was located on Ludgate Street from 1671 to 1679. Edwin dealt in all kinds of literature from “sixpenny pamphlets dealing with the lives of pirates and murderers, to folio histories and classics” in addition to religious-themed books, including an edition of //The Welch Common Prayer Book// and //Roman Forgeries// (Plomer). He was a “staunch Royalist and Churchman, issuing several books against Presbyterians and Dissenters” (Plomer).

PROVENANCE:  There are three signatures on the inside of the book including the name and address of the person who donated it to the Huguenot Society, Miss Sara Devotion. Her information is written on a card (with cut corners) pasted on the front board where the paste-down endpaper would normally be affixed (this copy is missing both front and back endpapers, revealing the edges of the wrapped leather of the cover on the inside boards). A date (April 12, 1894) is also written on this card. As Miss Devotion’s application to the Society was submitted on April 19th of the same year, the book was most assuredly donated at a later time. From her membership application, I was able to identify the other two names (ancestors and former owners) written on the recto of the first leaf (where the free endpaper would normally be; however, in this case the fly-leaf).

 The top inscription is written in pen: “Eb Devotions book. 1736.” The Reverend Ebenezer Devotion, great-great-grandfather of Miss Devotion, was a notable pastor, writer, and politician in pre-Revolutionary America; a contemporary clergyman, Ezra Stiles, noted in a diary listing on August 2, 1771, a month after Devotion’s death, that he was “a Gentleman of solid Understanding” and “extensive Reading” (Hayes, 616). Below Rev. Devotion’s name is the inscription: “Eben. Devotion (filius hyperscripte [son of the above-written]) 1776.” The son, Judge Ebenezer Devotion (great-grandfather of Miss Sara Devotion and a wealthy merchant), was born and lived in what is now Connecticut. Both Devotions //père et fils// had extensive libraries (Jaffee, 239).

 The book, it can be intuited, remained in the Devotion family from the time of Judge Devotion’s ownership until it reached the hands of his great-granddaughter who in turn donated it to the Huguenot Society. Nothing is known of its ownership before the Reverend Devotion, who followed the profession of his father who was also a Massachusetts (later Connecticut) pastor. At the time of the Reverend Ebenezer Devotion’s birth in 1714, the book had been extant for forty-one years.



OBSERVATIONS: Binding is full leather with attached label to spine “ROMAN / FORGERIE / (London 1673)”, affixed later. The spine is smooth with no raised bands. The leather is wrapped around paper-boards with missing endpapers. There is solely a fly-leaf before title page. The title page, as can be seen at the top of this page, is a mixture of Roman (both italicized and not) and Gothic fonts: some words printed in all upper case, others starting with upper case and continuing with lower case. Book measures approximately 6.75” high x 4.25” wide.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">The printing is coarse and not beautiful, lines of text rarely holding a straight horizontal line. Often, the formes seem to have been unevenly inked. Blotches of ink can be seen regularly. In most cases, the printing is not squared up to the page, resulting in uneven borders. The paper, discounting the age of the book and general use, is rough and often features holes that seem inherent to the material and not caused by later ill use or unfavorable conditions. The laid (or wire) lines run horizontally. Chain lines run vertically. And owing to the book's size and the orientation of the paper's lines, one can discern that we are handling an octavo.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">The front part of the book is foliated. The first notation appears on the recto of the fourth leaf, designated A3 (making the title page A1). A4 is noted, but the following four leaves, completing the gathering, are not designated. On the verso of A8, the Errata page dictates that "the Reader before he enters upon the Book is desired to correct these, as the principal Errata’s [//sic//], with his Pen." A previous owner of the book has dutifully followed directions, striking out erroneous words and adding lines where instructed. Gathering B begins with "An Advertisement to the Reader." On the verso of B8, there is "An Abridgment of Chapters." On the recto of C3 on the upper half of the page, there is a slightly altered version of the title as it appears on the title page (A1), here being //<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">A True Account of False Records; Discovering the Forgeries or Counterfeit-Antiquities of the Church of Rome. //<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Below this title, the first chapter begins. Pagination (beginning with numeral 1) begins here as well. The front matter of the book thus far (with Errata and "An Abridgment of Chapters", in addition to the discrepancy of titles and lack of pagination) seems to have been added, leading me to believe that this is an updated version of the book (i.e. the same formes, uncorrected, were used for the body of this printing OR previously printed gatherings were bound together with explanatory fore material).

__<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Works Cited __ <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,fantasy; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">Furdell, Elizabeth Lane. //Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England//. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Hayes, Kevin J. “Portraits of the Mind: Ebenezer Devotion and Ezra Stiles” in //The New England Quarterly//, 1997. 616.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Jaffee, David. “The Ebenezers Devotion: Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Consumption in Rural Connecticut” in //The New England Quarterly//, 2003. 239.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Plomer, Henry Robert. //A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667//. London: Blades, East & Blades for the Bibliographical Society, 1907.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Plomer, Henry Robert. //A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725//. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Bibliographical Society, 1922.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Poetry Foundation Web site. August 31, 2010. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81479%3E>