A Perambulation of Kent: Conteining the Description, Hystorie, and Customes of that shyre. Written in the yeere 1570

Imprinted at London, by Edm. Bollifant, 1596. [10] 588pp, [6]. With an engraved map of Britain and and engraved folding map of the Kent Beacons. Contemporary vellum, title in manuscript to spine, yapp edges, without original ties. Housed in recent custom half-morocco slip-case. Extremities marked and discoloured, chipping to head of spine. Hinges exposed, early manuscript calculations, pen-trials, and a note in a French hand to FFEP, early ownership inscriptions of James Humphrey and Francis Taylor to margins to title page, occasional spotting, without RFEP, recent ink-stamp of Rita A. Brenner to REP. The second and greatly enlarged edition of Lambarde's Perambulation of Kent, the first printed book on Kent and the earliest of all English county histories. William Lambarde, (1536-1601), English historian and jurist, fellow of Lincoln's Inn. In the year of his death he became Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London, and had previously been a personal historical consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. Kent was the stage for much of English history, it being home to the Ecclesiastical See of Canterbury, the Beacons, the coasts at Dover, Sandwich, and the Cinque Ports. The work includes a list of all the Archbishops, from Augustine in 599 and the foundation of English Christianity, through Lanfranc and Anselm, the Norman archbishops, Thomas Becket 'the first Englishman after the Conquest' to control Canterbury, up to Thomas Cranmer 'burned for the truth' and beyond, until 1583. ESTC S108239, STC 15176, Upcott I, p.350.. Second edition. Quarto.