CLANRICARDE, Marquis of. Memoirs of the Right Honourable The Marquis of Clanricarde. Limited to 250 Copies. In fine replica Irish Binding by Sir Trevor Lloyd.

Deputy General of Ireland. Containing Several Original Papers and Letters of King Charles II, Queen Mother, the Duke of York, the Duke of Lorrain, the Marquis of Ormond, the Archbishop of Tuam, Lord Viscount Taaffe, &c. relating to the Treaty between the Duke of Lorrain and the Irish Commissioners, from February 1650 to August 1653. Publish’d from his Lordship’s Original Mss. To which is Prefix’d, A dissertation, wherein some Passages of these Memoirs. With a Digression containing several curious Observations concerning the Antiquities of Ireland. With large list of subscribers. London: Printed for James Woodman, 1722. Demy octavo. pp. [viii], cxxxiv, 259. Title printed in red and black. Bound by Trevor Lloyd in full burgundy morocco, replicating an 18th Century Irish binding [his name stamped on lower endpaper]. Covers framed by double gilt fillets, a chain-link roll and a wide floral border, with elaborate all over tooling in gilt made up of repeated stars, circles, dots, stars, birds, flowers, flame plants, symmetrical flourishes, crowns, pointelles and stems. Spine divided into six panels by five gilt raised bands, title in gilt on olive-green morocco label in the second, the remainder lavishly tooled in gilt; board edges and turn-ins gilt; comb-marbled endpapers; green and gold endbands. Early owner’s signature on front endpaper ‘Arthur Bettesworth’ in a large copperplate hand. A superb example from the Lloyd Bindery.

Bradshaw 8513. This edition not in Gilbert.

The anonymity of the prefacer to this and the 1744 edition created great speculation for a long time. A bitter controversy arose between Dermod O’Connor and Thomas O Sullevane, the author of the ‘Dissertation’. He had occasion to indicate the limitations of Keating’s ‘Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn’ as an authority on early Irish history, and commented severely on the assertions of advertisements for the book. This was a direct criticism of O’Connor who, in turn, accused ‘this Prefacer’ of having only a limited knowledge of the Irish language.

The fullest and, apparently, the most accurate extant description of a Bardic School or College is contained in this edition, written in 1722 by Thomas O Sullevane, a scholar from Tipperary, while resident in London. The main purpose of his ‘Dissertation’ (136pp) was to put into historical context the memoirs of Clanricarde. We get a fair idea of the training as practised in the early part of that century, the manners of the professional classes; the whole structure of society was so wonderfully conservative that O Sullevane’s description will probably hold good for several centuries earlier - see Flower, ‘BM Cat. of Irish Mss.’ iii (16).

The list of subscribers includes the following: Sir John Evelyn, John de Courcy, Francis Macknamarra (25 books), Mr. Molyneux, Arthur O’Neil, John Prendergast, Col. James Prendergast, Thomas Sullevane, Richard West, Thomas Madox, Charles Spencer, etc.

A lavish binding richly tooled by Trevor Lloyd. The symmetrical tool replicated by Trevor was the most popular Irish binders’ tool of the eighteenth century [Craig Irish Bookbindings 1600-1800, p. 8]. A superb example from this master craftsman.

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