Beschreibung:

ANON]. Manuscript essay, a treatise of advice to a Catholic King, n.d. [first quarter of 18th Century], in an elegant hand on paper, 100 pages, 4to , contemporary red morocco. Provenance : Guilford collection; Phillipps ms 6120; Visount Birkenhead (armorial bookplate). An elegant and witty Jacobite treatise, evidently addressed to the Old Pretender: the author writes with learning and urgency both on the constitutional and legal status of the Jacobite claim, and on the wisest manner of rule for a Catholic monarch once re-established. A reference to Swift's Tale of a Tub dates the manuscript after 1704; advice on the choice of a queen presumably indicates a date before 1719 when James Stuart married. The treatise may be cautiously dated to the last years of Queen Anne's reign, when a consitutional re-establishment remained a possibility.