The Perambulation of Kent. Containing the Description, History and Customs of that County.

8vo., (6 4/8 x 3 6/8 inches). 2 leaves (B8 & 2E3) supplied in early pen and ink facsimile. 18th-century blind paneled calf, red morocco lettering-piece on the spine (scuffed). Provenance: Early pen-trials and marginal notes; engraved armorial bookplate of Thomas Parker, first earl of Macclesfield (1667-1732), lord chancellor, dated 1704 on the verso of the title-page; 19th-century North Library bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield on the front paste-down dated 1860, discreet blind-stamp on first three leaves. First published in 1576. Lambarde's association with Kent began in 1568 when he was appointed as commissioner of sewers for Kent, in 1570 he moved to the county after his marriage to a local girl. "What was in time intended as the first instalment of a historical topography of England was completed in draft in 1570, read in manuscript by Parker and Lord Burghley, and published as "Perambulation of Kent: Containing the Description, Hystorie and Customs of that Shyre" (1576). The earliest county history, based on wide and critical reading (partly informed by Lambarde's protestant suspicion of monks and their works), it draws also on Domesday Book and on royal charters, and includes in its climatic, economic, social, religious, and historical survey a short investigation of the see of Canterbury; a discussion of the local inheritance custom of gavelkind is appended. While Lambarde was uninterested in pre-Anglo-Saxon history (unlike William Camden) and exhibited no appreciation of landscape, his book 'is packed with learned information' and 'eminently readable' (McKisack, 137). The project to publish on other counties was eventually abandoned in 1585, when Lambarde learned of Camden's similar undertaking, but his interim researches were finally published as "Dictionarium Angliae topographicum et historicum" (1730) and his marginal notations survive in the books he consulted now in the British Library, including John Price's "Historiae Brytannicae defensio" (1573) and Alexander Neville's "De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto duce" (1575). From the celebrated library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, England, accumulated from the early 18th century by generations of the Parker family, and sold (over successive sales) by Sothebys. This copy belonged to the first Earl of Macclesfield, Thomas Parker, 1st Baron Parker, made Viscount Parker, of Ewelm in the County of Oxford, and Earl of Macclesfield, in the County Palatine of Chester in 1716. He was Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench from 1710 to 1718 and Lord High Chancellor from 1718 to 1725.…