855G Thomas Pelletier active 1598-1628.
De l’inuiolable et sacrée personne des rois :contre tous assassins et parricides qui ozent attenter sur leurs Majestez.
Paris : François Huby 1610 SOLD
Octavo 6 x 4 inches A-Q8 First Edition there is an ownership signature on verso of title 
dated 1701. Very light water stain at top corner of fore-margin Old thin boards with green diced calf label on front cover “Anno 1610”. Minor chips on spine. .
Dedication signed Pelletier. This is very scarce work, it is an attack on tyrannicide while at the same time defending the Jesuit Order just after Ravaillac,a want-to-be Jesuit, assassinated Henry IV of France. In 1609, Ravaillac claimed to have experienced a vision instructing him to convince King Henry IV to convert the Huguenots to Catholicism. Between Pentecost 1609 and May 1610, Ravaillac made three separate trips to Paris to tell his vision to the king, and lodged with Charlotte du Tillet, mistress of Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d’Épernon. Unable to meet the king, Ravaillac interpreted Henry’s decision to invade the Spanish Netherlands as the start of a war against the Pope. Determined to stop him, he decided to kill the king.On 14 May 1610, Ravaillac lay in wait in the Rue de la Ferronnerie in Paris (now south of the Forum des Halles); when the king passed, his carriage was halted by a blockage in the street, and Ravaillac stabbed Henry to death. Pierre de l’Estoile, the chronicler, stated of the king:His coach, entering from St Honoré to Ferronnerie Street, was blocked on one side by a cart filled with wine and on the other by a cart filled with hay… Ravaillac climbed on the wheel of the above-named coach and with a knife trenchant on both sides stabbed him between the second and third ribs.Ravaillac was immediately seized by police and taken to the Hôtel de Retz to avoid a mob lynching. …Jesuits were accused of complicity in Jean Chastel’s attempt to assassinate Henry IV on 27 December 1594. Chastel’s actions gave Jesuit opponents just what they needed to achieve their goal of expelling the hated Society. Expelled from most of France by the parlement of Paris and by several other parlements, the Jesuits returned when the king granted them clemency.The Society was banished from France and from Venice; there were grave differences with the King of Spain, with Sixtus V, with the Dominican theologians; and within the Society the rivalry between Spaniard and Italian led to unusual complications and to the calling of two extraordinary general congregations (fifth and sixth). The origin of these troubles is perhaps eventually to be sought in the long wars of religion, which gradually died down after the canonical absolution of Henry IV, 1595 (in which Fathers Georges, Toledo, and Possevinus played important parts). The fifth congregation in 1593 supported Acquaviva steadily against the opposing parties, and the sixth, in 1608, completed the union of opinions. Paul V had in 1606 reconfirmed the Institute, which from now onwards may be considered to have won a stable position in the Church at large, until the epoch of the Suppression and the Revolution. Missions were established in Canada, Chile, Paraguay, the Philippine Islands, and China. At Father Acquaviva’s death the Society numbered 13,112 members in 32 provinces and 559 houses.’
DeBacker- Sommervogel vol VI col .. Not in here?
790G R(obert) H(owllet) fl 1696
red leather spine labels, gilt-stamped, one folding map and one interior page laminated onto Japanese paper. . Some light scattered foxing. This is a very nice solid copy . Two Volume
winter and spring months he explored the upper Mississippi valley where he ascended the “Rivière Longue”; some scholars consider this a fanciful tale, others argue that he had discovered the Missouri River. Upon return to Amsterdam in 1703 he published his three most famous works: Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amerique Septentrionale,(this work) Memoires de l’Amerique Septentrionale, and Supplement aux Voyages ou Dialogues avec le sauvage Adario. Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amerique Septentrionale provides a thorough and detailed account of de Lahontan’s life and stay in New France, while Memoires de l’Amerique Septentrionale describes his observations of geography, institutions, commerce as well as information about native tribes. Finally, Supplement aux Voyages ou Dialogues avec le sauvage Adario lambasts institutional Christianity by means of a dialogue between de Lahontan and a Huron Chief named Adario (The Rat). The author attempts to contrast the injustice of Christianity with the freedom and justice of native people. His idealized view of “natural humanity” as a vehicle for criticizing European civilization was a forceful early expression of the “noble savage” trope associated with the Enlightenment. (Wikipedia)
Lahontan “had not lacked opportunities to distinguish himself. He had taken part in two campaigns against the Iroquois, had twice been besieged by the English, had visited almost all parts of New France and may well have reached the Mississippi at a time when few Frenchmen had seen it. But he appears to have made little mark; except during his final months at Placentia, the official correspondence of the time scarcely mentions him But while serving and travelling in New France he had done something few of his fellow officers thought to do: ‘In the course of my Voyages and Travels, I took care to keep particular Journals of every thing…’, sometimes even making notes on birch-bark. From these diaries he was able later to compose the three books which were to make him, next to Louis Hennepin, the most widely read author on North America in the first half of the 18th century. “Lahontan’s works appeared at a time when travel narratives were enjoying an extraordinary vogue in Europe and when interest in North America, aroused by the ‘Jesuit Relations’ and whetted by the voyages of Hennepin and Henri Tonty, was greater than ever before. His ‘Nouveaux voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale’ and their sequel, ‘Mémoires de septentrionale, ‘ were published in January 1703
Bound in contemporary English calf, the hinges discreetly repaired and the full spine, tooled in gold and with red morocco label, intact. A beautiful copy, very clean and with no blemishes. The map VERY crisp and on heavy paper with no repairs, splits, or fraying. Excellent. The text is illustrated with a large folding map of Oxfordshire and sixteen full-paged engravings of fossils, minerals, plants, the fascinating Enston waterworks, and other marvels and curiosities, by Michael Burghers.
Large quadruped fossils he considered the remains of giants, except for one identified as that of an elephant through comparison with an Elephant skull in the Ashmolean museum.”One of [Plot’s] main objectives was to describe local crafts and farming techniques, in the hope of diffusing successful practices or new inventions throughout the country. Thus technological information is scattered through both his works on natural history, providing useful evidence on contemporary agriculture, mines, and such industries as the Staffordshire potteries.” (DSB)”Some seventy species of fossils are described. Here we have excellent descriptions and beautifully engraved drawings of these objects from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Among them are many well-known forms…. He recognized the essential differences between those unrelated groups of bivalved shells, the brachiopods and the lamellibranchs”. (Challinor p. 62).This work also contains the first depiction of a dinosaur fossil. The fossil femur, identified by Plot as belonging to an elephant, is now thought to belong to Megalosaurus. The illustration is bound before page 143.
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