1618 Folio Cartwright’s Confutation – American Incunable - Pilgrim Press

A Confutation of the Rhemists Translation, Glosses, and Annotations on the New Testament, so farre as they containe manifest impieties, heresies, idolatries, superstitions, prophanesse, treasons, slanders, absurdities, falsehoods, and other evills…

Summary

The work of the great Puritan Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603) posthumously printed at the underground Pilgrim Press by William Brewster in Leiden who would later board the Mayflower to America.

Description

Printed title page (1618) with a woodcut printer’s device featuring a bear. Thirty-nine preliminary leaves. Text in single column Roman font. The full text of the Rheims translation is given only through the book of Matthew. Thereafter only the verses pertaining to the controversial notes are quoted. Concludes with a Table (9 ff.). Head- and tailpieces, woodcut initials to the start of each book.

Collation

A-F^4, f^4, G-Z^4, Aa-Zz^4, Aaa-Zzz^4, Aaaa-Zzzz^4, Aaaaa-Iiiii^4, Kkkkk-Ooooo^2 (-Ooooo2, final blank leaf).

Binding

Modern dark red half-calf. Spine with five raised bands. Endpapers renewed.  

Condition

A1 (title), A2 upper marginal loss; pin-sized wormhole through final third of volume; light lower marginal dampstain to gutter, touching text from Hebrews through Revelation; Fffff-Ooooo heavier staining; Lllll-Mmmmm marginal loss; last two ff. with loss.

Note

The author and printer of this work shared a steadfast commitment to church reform. Cartwright, a gifted preacher and staunch advocate of Presbyterianism, spent a third of his life in prison or exile. He was described by John Strype as “the head and most learned of that sect of dissenters then called Puritans.” Brewster, a Cambridge-educated separatist, later followed a group of like-minded reformers to Holland. With the support of Thomas Brewer, he established a clandestine press, publishing twenty Separatist books between 1617 and 1619. This particular title came to the attention of Sir Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador, who had been tasked by James I with suppressing literature deemed subversive to English political ideology.

Brewster, however, had even greater ambitions. In 1620, he joined the Pilgrims on their journey to America in pursuit of religious freedom. His works are considered true American incunabula, and legend holds that “the great iron screw” used to reinforce the Mayflower’s main beam during a violent storm was originally from Brewster’s press.

References

Herbert 364; ESTC S107186; USTC 3008255; Leona Rostenberg, The Minority Press and the English Crown: A Study in Repression, 1558-1625, pp. 195-198; Joel Beeke, Meet the Puritans, pp. 128-132.