Rights of the Kingdom; or, Customs of our Ancestours: Touching The Duty, Power, Election, or Succession of our Kings and Parliaments; our True Liberty, Due Allegiance….

First Edition. Small quarto, [8], 93, 30-191, 176-[184], [4] pp., text continuous despite pagination, title inscribed "Sum Ashursti..... 1649", Latin manuscript notes to folding blank leaf before title, English manuscript side notes, some on folding fore-edge flaps. Bound in full calf by Hatton of Manchester, binder's signature to front turn-in, ornate corner pieces, red morocco spine label lettered in gilt, spine in six compartments with floral tooling, marbled endpapers, all edges sprinkled in red. Published by Richard Bishop (London), 1649. A little rubbing to the binding, some occasional minor browning, marginal repairs to L1 and final leaf. A very good copy of this scarce and important work. This copy has notable provenance containing the armorial bookplate of the Earl of Macclesfield's North Library to the front pastedown, and also the armorial blind-stamp to the title page and second leaf. "The library of the earls of Macclesfield was created in the first fifty years or so of the eighteenth century, and was one of the great Country House libraries of England. It was housed in two large rooms, the larger North library and the South Library at Shirburn Castle, Shirburn, a small hamlet near Watlington, Oxfordshire, England, a house and estate acquired by Thomas Parker first earl of Macclesfield (1667-1732), a distinguished lawyer, and founder of the family's fortunes…. In the nineteenth century some of its treasures, particularly the collection of letters of scientists, amongst them Isaac Newton, were published and made available. Throughout the twentieth century access was limited. Before 2000 the sole element of the library which had been sold was the important collection of Welsh material (from Williams) which went to form part of the foundation collections of the National Library of Wales." (Maggs Bros Ltd. Catalogue 1459.) John Sadler (1615-1674) was an English Lawyer, Academic, Town Clerk of London, Member of Parliament, and Private Secretary to Oliver Cromwell. When the English Civil War began and politics became increasingly fractious, Sadler came to the fore as a prominent parliamentarian. In 1645, Sadler's strong political connections led both him and writer, Henry Parker, to being appointed as the House of Commons Secretaries. In addition to being an important administrator, Sadler also became a key member of the Parliamentary cause. In June 1645, the Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell emerged as victorious against the Royalist Army and took possession of several discreditable letters the King had written to Queen Henrietta Maria. Sadler and Henry Parker together with the poet Thomas May were selected to edit the letters which they later published in 1645 under the title "The King's Cabinet Opened." In 1646, during a thwarted Royalist Counter-Revolution supported by the Presbyterians, Sadler wrote a short work called "A Word in Season", where he argued that the English public owed their freedom to Parliament and not the King. By the publication of "Rights of the Kingdom" in 1649, Sadler had a well-respected reputation as a strong defender of the Parliamentary cause. After the execution of King Charles I, Sadler used the "Rights of the Kingdom" to defend the recently established Commonwealth. "Rights of the Kingdom" deeply influenced Sadler's most famous peers Milton and George Lawson in their works on the Commonwealth. At the end of the 17th century, John Locke suggested his readers should study Sadler's work to improve their knowledge on British legal history. Sadler explained that his primary aim in "Rights of the Kingdom" was to, "…see the Kingdoms Rights, the Laws and Customs of our Ancestors, concerning King and Parliament; that we may know their Power and Priviledge, their Duty and their Limits, &. and how our Fathers did commit the power of making Laws, and judging by those Laws; and how they made us swear Allegiance to our King; what power they gave him over us; and what they did not give him over any of his subjects; and how we should behave ourselves." "Sadler's view of the executive function was, as we have seen, not our modern one, but in other respects his grasp of the principles of the doctrine of the separation of powers was clear." (Maurice Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 1967.) This work was one of the key founding texts for British Israelitism, and regarded as "one of the first invented expressions of an invented Israelite genealogy for the British". (Tudor Parfitt, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth, 2002, p 42.) (ESTC R203445, John Sadler (1615-1674) religion, common law, and reason in early modern England, University of Chicago (2015). Please contact us for shipping costs if ordering from outside the UK.