With Cambridge Indenture Bound in
SCLATER, William.
An Exposition with Notes upon the first and second Epistles to the Thessalonians ... London, printed for I. Parker and are to be sold by George Vincent, 1627.
[bound with:] –. A Briefe Exposition with Notes, upon the second Epistle to the Thessalonians ... London, George Miller for George Vincent, 1627.
Two works in one vol., small 4to; I: pp. [8], 351, [1 (blank)], 383–598 (complete), title within woodcut border; II: pp. [2 (blank)], [6], 307, [1]; text of both works within ruled frames, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; first work with small losses to outer margins of A2 and X6 and marginal tear to M2, occasional small ink stains and other marks; good copies in contemporary Cambridge(?) calf over pasteboards, triple fillet border in blind to covers, five raised bands to spine, fragments of a sixteenth-century indenture preserved in hinges; somewhat worn with wear to spine, corners, and covers; ownership inscriptions of ‘George Thornborrow’ (1703) to rear endpapers.
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An Exposition with Notes upon the first and second Epistles to the Thessalonians ...
An attractive copy of these best-selling expositions of Thessalonians 1 and 2 by the Bedfordshire-born clergyman William Sclater (1575–1626), in a contemporary binding with fragments of an indenture relating to scholarships at Cambridge University bound in.
Educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, Sclater served as rector of Pitminster in Somerset, prebendary of Bath and Wells, and chaplain to Bishop Arthur Lake and to Lord Stanhope of Harrington. ‘A staunch Calvinist, Sclater regarded the innovations of avant-garde conformists with horror. The refusal of some divines to identify the pope as Antichrist, together with James I’s policy of moderation towards Romanists, caused him to wonder what had become of “that ancient severity and strict hand over papists”’ (ODNB). His ‘best-selling Expositions on 1 and 2 Thessalonians (1619, 1627) merited five more editions by 1638’ (ibid.).
The indenture fragments visible in the hinges of the binding refer to a gift by ‘Roberte Doket’ for ‘too scolers’ at ‘Cambrigge’. This must be Robert Duckett (d. 1522), rector of Chevening in Kent, who founded two scholarships at St John’s College; he was from Holderness and ‘holdernes’ is mentioned herein.
The notes to the rear endpaper by one ‘George Thornborrow’, dated 1703, list the Biblical passages preached upon by numerous ministers e.g. ‘Mr Flemings subiect Mathew the 9 C verse 21; Mr Swinton subiect Hebrews C the 4the latter part of the 13 verse …’. He also records that ‘Mr Nellson [was] elected minister’ and that ‘Mr Kenion died the 11th day of February in the year of our Lord 1703’. Thornborrow does not appear to have been a student at Oxford or Cambridge, nor is he on the Clergy of the Church of England database.
ESTC S116807 and S116803.