The Romish Horseleech

The Volume is in Good Condition only re-backed, retaining blind ruled English calf boards, with a later spine divided into five compartments by four raised bands, with a red morocco letter-piece in the second compartment from the top, with the board edges blind rolled and leaf edges green speckled. Externally the boards and spine are generally scuffed, with the front board detached, splits to the rear hinge, with chipping to the head and tail of the spine, and with the board corners bumped a bit. Internally the leaves are generally clean and amply margined, with some mild creasing and toning on certain leaves, some occasional mild fox marks, and little else in the way of stains or tears.

A good candidate for rebinding.

Thomas Stavely

Thomas Stavely was the son of William Staveley, rector of Cossington, Leicestershire, by his wife Anne, daughter of Thomas Babington of Rothley, was born at East Langton, Leicestershire, in 1626. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, admitted of the Inner Temple on 2 July 1647, and called to the bar on 12 June 1654. He resided the greatest part of his life at Belgrave, but a few years before his death removed to Leicester; he there held the office of steward of the court of records, to which he was appointed in 1672, probably by the Earl of Huntingdon.

The stimulus given to protestant opinion by the conversion of James, duke of York, to Romanism , the Declaration of Indulgence (1672), and the countermove of the Test Act of 1673, elicited from Staveley in 1674 the work by which he is best known, The Romish Horseleech: or an Impartial Account of the Intolerable Charge of Popery to this Nation. The work encapsulates the Protestant anger with the vast sums of wealth entitled to the catholic church. The piece makes particular mention of Peter’s Pence, a tax on households, and the First Fruits, which procured vast sums in the first month of a bishop s office.