A Briefe Discourse what Orders were best for Repulsing of Forraine Force, if at any time they should invade us by Sea in Kent, or elsewhere. First printed in 1590,

title-page foxed, pp. vii, 18, [2, ads], 8vo, [bound with:] [?Bruce (John)] Military Memoir for the Defence of the Eastern District. [London, 1798], pp. [iv, including initial blank], 83, [and:] [Bruce (John)] Report on the Arrangements which have been adopted, in former Periods, when France threatened invasions of Britain or Ireland. London, 1798], pp. iv, 83,[1], [iv], cxx, dated at head of text in MS 'State Paper Office. January 6th. 1798', and p. 83 subscribed by John Bruce ('I have the Honour to be' &c, &c) and with the direction to Henry Dundas, [and:] Le Mesurier (Havilland) The British Commissary, in two parts. Part I. A system for the British Commissariat on foreign service. Part II. An Essay towards ascertaining the use and duties of a Commissariat staff in England. Printed for T. Egerton, 1798, pp. [ii, blank], ix, 177 (including folding tables), contemporary half calf, rebacked. 'Dundas continued to employ Bruce to lend academic weight to his pragmatic policies, noting that the professor's sole joy was to be "buried in old records". The duties were formalized in an official position as historiographer to the East India Company in 1793. It had been clinched by Bruce's Historical View of Plans for the Government of British India (1793), fruit of three years' research exploring options for the imminent renewal of the company's charter. Despite its pernickety style, it sufficiently softened up public opinion for a plan which Dundas wished to air without taking personal responsibility, the creation for himself of a post of president of the Board of Control for India, served by a permanent staff. In 1796 Bruce produced a historical review of the balance of power in Europe. In 1798 his report on defence guided measures to meet the French threat. Bruce was to write a similar report on the requirements of the circumstances created by the uneasy peace of Amiens in 1801. A report published in 1799 dealt with the Anglo-Scottish union, as a precedent for the projected Irish union' (ODNB). (2. ESTC T222116, Rylands only; 3. ESTC T102020, there was another version with the imprint of A. Strahan; 4. ESTC T112138, 2 in the BL and 1 in RUSI Library of Military History).…