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An extremely good rare first edition, lovingly kept within the same family – to which stacks of relevant ephemera have been added over two centuries: a total one off.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. xvi+304 pages with index. Octavo (8 3/4″ x 7″) bound in original publisher’s green cloth with gilt lettering and decoration to spine and blind stamped decoration and ruled edges to cover.

First edition. Those who have studied in the interior history of this long period the demoralizing effects of the popish system of confession and absolution will find no difficulty in conceiving the facility with which the inmates of the monasteries, at the time of their dissolution, confessed to vices from the very name of which our imagination now recoils. These documents are of peculiar importance amid the religious disputes which at present agitate the world; and I think that even the various lists of the confessions of the monks and nuns of the several religious houses, entitled compertay and preserved in manuscript, ought to be made public. The great cause of the Reformation has been but ill served by concealing the depravities of the system which it overthrew. I will only add that I have done what I could, under circumstances, to ascertain the dates of these letters, and arrange them in chronological order. It was the custom at this period in dating letters to write the day of the month without the year, which now gives rise to considerable difficulties. In the description in the Cottonian Catalogue the dates of these letters are thrown into almost hopeless confusion.