Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/349

us.vii.may3,i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 341

Two more editions of the 'Speeches and Prayers' appeared in the year 1661. The first was entitled (I cite the whole of the title-page):—

The short preface to this tract is different from the preface to the original 'Speeches and Prayers,' is signed " W. S.," and dated "Decemb. 16ᵗʰ 1660"; and each account of each regicide is followed by one solitary page of "observations" to that regicide's detriment. Whether these observations were taken from a book by a loyalist is doubtful. Probably they were as intentionally dishonest as the title-page and preface, so feeble and futile are they. In all other respects this book is a reprint of the 'Speeches and Prayers,' and, like them, contains no publisher's name.

3. The third edition, in 1661, omitted the phrase "Rebels no Saints," and commenced: "A Compleat Collection of the lives, speeches and prayers," the rest of the title-page running as in 'Rebels no Saints.' In the book, nevertheless, there is a great addition. The 'Preface' is dated and initialled as in 'Rebels no Saints,' but has an additional paragraph; while to each collection of 'Speeches and Prayers,' &c, a life of each regicide has been prefixed. These "lives" are in startling contrast with the 'Speeches and Prayers,' and actually contradict them in detail. Every one of these lives was taken verbatim, verses included, from the book by George Bate, published by Thomas Vere in the same year (1661), and entitled:

Anthony à Wood says that this Bate was not Dr. George Bate, the author of 'Elenchus Motuum Nuperorum,' &c, but was a time-server. Evidently he was one who could not complain of the use made of his book. The British Museum pressmark of the 'Compleat Collection' is 291. b. 11.

To turn to the cause of the variations of the titles. Stitched pamphlets were bound in blue paper, and this was the case with the original 'Speeches and Prayers' (see the 'Exact Narrative,' p. 65). Hence our modern word "Blue-book." (I may be pardoned a slight digression here if I point out that the 'N.E.D.'s' earliest instance of the term, in 1715, is carried further back by the mention of "blew books" in the 'Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, for 1633-4,' p. 279.)

The way in which the first edition was sold is shown by the evidence of Brewster's apprentice Bodvell at the trial (p. 41):—