An End To Controversie Between The Romane Catholique, And The Protestant Religions Bayly, Thomas Addenda,Fine & Rare: Theology & Church History

~Original dark brown calf boards, framed by double fillets in blind. Rebacked in near-matching dark brown calf, blind double fillets, red gilt label, and gilt numerals to spine. Discreet repairs to board corners. Moderate wear to boards and board edges. Spine cracking over front hinge, which is tender. All edges speckled, darkened. Small 4to (14.4 x 19cm). Lacking front and rear pastedowns. Bookplate to inside front board. Considerable edgewear to front free endpaper, and large closed vertical tear to blank front endpage (c. 14cm). With 1p. 'Explication of the Frontispiece', but lacking engraved frontis itself (a printout from an online edition has been supplied). Pen annot. to titlepage. Armorial bookplate of Trinity College, Cambridge, to verso of t.p., with 'sold' library stamp to top corner. No publisher. Decorated initials. Minor scattered foxing; noticeable age-browning to pp. 329-78. Errata page to rear. Published under the initials 'T. B.': this is Thomas Bayly (d. c. 1657), Church of England clergyman and Roman Catholic controversialist. The son of Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, Thomas Bayly rose to become sub-dean of Wells; during the English Civil War he served as an officer under the Catholic earl of Worcester and was present at the fall of Raglan Castle. In 1649 he published Certamen Religiosum,an account of a conference between Charles I and the earl of Worcester at Raglan Castle, where he claimed that Worcester had attempted to convert the king who had nevertheless remained 'constant to his religion' (ODNB). Bayly himself, however, who left for the continent in 1650, was to convert to Catholicism by 1654, when this volume, 'An End to Controversie', was first published. As the opening epistle shows, Bayly 'had been much affected by the collapse of the established church in England, a punishment, as he thought, for its schism. He was especially outraged that the execution of Charles I, the head of state and of church, had not inspired more protest from the dispossessed higher clergy' (ODNB). 'Thus when my Church was down', writes Bayly, 'I viewed the foundation, and found the foundation of my Church to be layd in fallibility' (p. 40). Bayly dedicated ''An End to Controversie' to Walter Montague, the second son of the first earl of Manchester and an earlier Catholic convert, who ended his life as Lord Abbot of Nanteul. Bayly himself seems to have died in Rome not long before the Restoration, possibly as part of the household of Cardinal Ottoboni. Scarce. Clancy 83. ~Robust packaging. Overseas orders trackable on request. Size: (ix), 401, (8)pp