An Answere to the Fifth Part of Reportes Lately Set Forth by Syr Edward Cooke Knight, the Kinges Attorney Generall. Concerning the ancient & moderne Municipall lawes of England, which do apperteyne to Spirituall Power & Iurisdiction

~Eighteenth-century half calf, marbled paper to boards. Raised bands and red gilt label to spine. 4to (14 x 19.2cm). Starting at top spine over front and rear hinges (c. 3.5cm). Replacement laid paper endpapers. Bookplate to inside front board. Browning to title page, and outer margin of t.p. neatly reinforced at verso. Final (blank) page of table to rear laid down. A little worming to inner margins, not affecting text. Head- and tail-pieces and decorated initials. No publisher; according to British Library record printed at Saint-Omer by F. Bellet. Published anonymously (Persons appears as ''a Catholicke Devyne'' on the title page). Owner''s signature in old hand to t.p.: ''George Taylor''. A response by Persons, arguably early modern England''s foremost Catholic polemicist, to the Edward Coke, later Chief Justice, the country''s most distinguished jurist, who in his spectacular series of Reports ''provided a critical mass of material for the rapidly developing modern common law'', and, in the 1605 Fifth Part of the Reports, included his ''treatise on the crown''s ecclesiastical supremacy'' (ODNB). Persons'' response includes his defence against Coke''s ''extravagant excursions'' (sig. 2a3v) during the trial of Henry Garnett, Persons'' fellow Jesuit, in the wake of the Gunpowder plot (Garnett had been made aware of the plot under the seal of the confessional, and was hung, drawn, and quartered on 3 May 1606; Coke had inveighed against him as a ''Doctor of Dissimulation'' (Caraman, 1964, Garnet, 403)). ''The critique of these procedures was linked to a questioning of Coke''s celebration of English freedom from canon law; in Persons''s view, the state of English justice was in serious decline'' (ODNB). Persons, ''feared by his opponents for his satirical wit and powers of logical demolition'' (ODNB), was also also a brilliant prose stylist: ''(t)he writings of Hooker, who was a Country Clergyman, and of Parsons the Jesuit'', wrote Jonathan Swift a century later, ''are in a style that, with very few Allowances, would not offend any present Reader; much more clear and intelligible than (.) several others who wrote later'' (The Tatler, 28 September 1710). Allison & Rogers 611; Backer & Sommervogel VI, 311. ~Robust packaging. Tracking can be added to overseas orders. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs. Size: (70), 386, (14)pp. …