Vox populi. Vox Dei. Vox Regis. Digitus Dei. The Belgick Pismire. The Tongue-Combat. Symmachia or The True-Loves Knot. The High-Wayes of God and the King. The Projector
Publisher: The Netherlands
Published: [1624]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 836
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"> Thick small 4to. pp. [10], 32; [12], 86, [2]; [10], 74; [6], 44, [2]; [12], 99, [1]; [8], 104; [4], 34, [2]; 88; [8], 39, [1]. Errata note (8 lines) to the Belgicke pismire on A1 verso; errata note (2 lines) to the High wayes of God on p. 88 (L4 verso). Bound in early 19th-century speckled and neatly rehinged calf.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">A nonce collection incorporating nine separately-issued pamphlets of 1622-24, as called for in W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, &amp; K. F. Pantzer (eds.), Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, &amp; Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640 (STC). 3 vols. London, 1976-1991(2nd ed.), 22102.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Two further tracts were added, probably by a contemporary owner or bookseller, namely: The Second Part of Vox Populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likenes of Matchiavell in a Spanish Parliament, wherein are discovered his treacherous &amp; subtile Practises, To the ruine as well of England, as the Netherlandes. Faithfully Transtated [sic] out of the Spanish Coppie by a well-willer to England and Holland. Gorinchem, Ashverus Janss [i.e. London, Nicholas Okes], 1624 Stilo novo; and Newes from Pernassus. The Politicall Touchstone, Taken from Mount Pernassus: Whereon the Governments of the greatest Monarchies of the World are touched. Helicon [i.e. Holland], 1622. </span><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">“The Second Part” has a splendid engraved title showing Count Gondomar standing in an elegant robe and hat, flanked by an image of himself riding in a donkey litter, and his much-ridiculed ‘chair of ease’ with a circular hole in its seat (A. M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Cambridge, 1955, ii: 45, no. 4, state II); it seems to be rare, missing in the Early English Books Online reproductions of W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, &amp; K. F. Pantzer (eds.), Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, &amp; Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640. 3 vols. London, 1976-1991 (2nd ed.), 22103 (Folger) and 22103.3 (British Library), as well as several others cited by ESTC online. A later state (Hind’s III) has ‘The Second Edition’ added to the right of the head Count Gondomar, and the main image was later adapted for use in two editions of Middleton’s suppressed anti-Spanish play, ‘A Game at Chesse.’ The engraving of ‘The Spanishe Parlament’ on A2r is shaved at the top, affecting only the headline, but perhaps also supplied; that of the ‘Jesuits and prists as they used to sitt at Counsell’ (G4v) is intact. The dedication to the Frederick V, Elector Palatinate, and his wife Elizabeth is signed ‘T. S. of V.’, i.e. Thomas Scott of Utrecht, and the postscript addressed to Parliament at pp. 59-60 is signed ‘T. S.’. This follow-up to Scott’s original tract of 1619-20, in which Gondomar is presented as ‘the most ruthless and vicious spy the world has seen’ (Ewing, p. 79), is of course also a literary forgery, there being no ‘Spanish coppie’ behind it, only Scott’s imaginary dialogue, attributed to the far more circumspect diplomat. See STC 22103.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The general title of ‘Vox Populi,” listing the pamphlets in varying sizes of type, is slightly restored at the inner margin, and a fine contemporary portrait by Simon de Passe of Count Gondomar – whose physiognomy is surprisingly similar to Scott’s – is inserted, replacing one of Scott himself by Crispin van de Passe (the Elder), often absent. Other engraved illustrations are attributed by Hind to Crispin I: see A. M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Cambridge, 1955, ii, pp.44-45, plates 16-18. Bookplate of the Duke of Sussex (1773-1843, sales 1844). See J. Sabin, A Dictionary of Books relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time. New York, 1868 [i.e. 1867]-1936, 76378 for the numerous references to Spanish activities in North and Central America and the West Indies.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The gadfly religio-political pamphleteer Thomas Scott, who had many contemporary namesakes, seems to have matriculated in the faculty of theology at the University of St Andrews in 1618; to have been in Edinburgh in early 1619; to have received his B.D. at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in early 1620; and to have preached three sermons at Norwich and Thetford during that summer (published in 1623). By the end of 1620, distinctly a Puritan in his views, he was Rector of St Saviour’s, Norwich. If he were the same Thomas Scott who was ordained deacon and priest at London on 24 September 1620, aged forty (see J. &amp; J.A. Venn, Alumni Cantabridgiensis. Cambridge, 1927, vol. iv, 33), he would have been born in 1580, but if he were such a late entrant into the ministry he could hardly have been the Scott who was chaplain to King James I in 1616. He does speak (in one of the sermons published in 1623, present here) of having misspent his time ‘long subjected [to] common and crying iniquities’, and of being now (1620) ‘older, weaker, and more subject to diseases, and neerer the grave, than either my yeares or native constitution would have carried me so early’, which may suggest a comparatively late turning to redemption, by way of the Church. The well-known portrait of the polemicist by Crispin van de Passe I (Hind, ii:44 and Plate 16) is dated 1624, with ‘Aetatis suae 41’, which would indicate c. 1583 as his birth date.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">While still in Edinburgh in early 1619, Scott wrote his first and most famous, or infamous tract, a fierce and highly imaginative denunciation of the Hispanophile tendencies fostered by James I (including the proposed and failed ‘Spanish Match’ between his elder son Charles and the Infanta Maria Anna), and the diplomatic presence in London of the astute Spanish Ambassador, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar. ‘Vox Populi, or Newes from Spayne,’ Scott’s incendiary anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic pamphlet, purports to be a translation from a ‘Spanish coppie,’ and to relate the substance of Gondomar’s insidious residence, as reported in 1618 to the council summoned by Philip III at Madrid. His supposed boasts included the cheerful violation of English religious laws, via his special privileges (‘crowds’ of recusants flocked illegally to services of mass at his private chapel), and his delight in the downfall and execution of Sir Walter Ralegh, the latest scourge of Spain’s maritime and colonial empire. Although laxly suppressed, the anonymous tract – which many readers believed genuine – was secretly printed and pirated in or near London in late 1620 (certainly before 28 November), and called forth at least seven more illicit quartos so dated, circulating as well in manuscript when the English authorities stepped up their pursuit of the unknown author and his printers. Scott himself went into hiding at once, and in February 1621 emigrated quietly to Utrecht, in the Protestant United Provinces, where he was welcomed warmly, obtained the useful post of Chaplain to an English regiment at Gorinchem, and later became the first ministerial leader of the newly-established English Church of Utrecht – all the while composing and publishing (still anonymously) further anti-Spanish polemics for distribution at home. He seems never to have returned to England, but his career was cut short on 18 June 1626 by John Lambert, a malcontented military countryman, who murdered him in the streets of Utrecht, with a rapier thrust to the belly. The killer was apprehended, tortured by interrogators, and hanged two days later, but no clear motive, among many sought, was ever adduced. Scott’s publications found an eager audience even after his death, and continued to circulate, individually and gathered up in at least three nonce collections of varying contents, assembled from publishers’ stocks in Holland and (perhaps) London. Some, indeed, included works not by Scott, but apparently sponsored or approved by him.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">For a tentative bibliography of Scott, see A. Ewing, ‘A Tongue-Combat betweene two English Souldiers’: A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Puritan Polemics, 1618-1628. M.A. thesis Universiteit Leiden, 2013.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Our present volume seems to be ‘all Scott’, as Scott himself asserts in the otherwise unreprinted foreword to (1). It is constituted as follows:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"></p><ol><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Thomas Scott, Vox Populi. Or Newes from Spayne, translated according to the Spanish coppie. Which may serve to forewarn both England and the United Provinces how farre to trust to Spanish pretences. Imprinted in the yeare 1620 [sic, really Holland, 1624], pp. [10], 32. Signatures: *4 B-E4.
STC 22101, as reissued in STC 22102 (the present assembly) ‘with title-page usually cancelled’. This is the only non-anonymous edition, having the prefatory foreword ‘To the Reader’ – which is entirely new – signed ‘Thom: Scott’ (*4v). An outright literary forgery, of course, there being no ‘Spanish coppie’ to be ‘translated’ by the pamphleteer.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott], Vox Dei. [Holland?, 1623?]. pp. [12], 86. Signatures: *⁴ A-L⁴.
Without terminal blank [L4] and errata leaf (also absent in the British Library copy of the nonce collection); the fine frontispiece slightly shaved, affecting a line of engraved text. The only edition of this text, with the preliminaries in an order of their own, but all present. Scott begs his readers to ‘reforme’ whatever he finds amiss, for ‘the Printer understands no English.’ STC 22097a.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott], Vox Regis. [Utrecht, A. van Herwijck, 1624], pp [10], 74. Signatures: [.·.]² χ1 A-I⁴ K²(-K2).
Fine engraved frontispiece of King James I enthroned, with Prince Charles, Princess Elizabeth, and the Elector Frederick kneeling before him, flanked by bishops and armed peers. Only edition, enlarged issue, STC 22105.5. The preface is initialled ‘T. S.’, and refers to ‘Vox Dei’ as previously published.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott], Exod. 8.19. Digitus Dei. Esay. 59.1 The Lords Hand is not shortned. [Holland, 1623], pp. [2], 44. Signatures: A-F⁴ G² (A1 and G2 blank).
Only edition of a sermon on Luke 13.1-5 (‘except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish’), in which Scott advocates the unity of Protestant churches in England and Europe in confronting the threats of the Papist (and particularly Spanish) enemy. STC 22075.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott], The Belgicke Pismire: Stinging the slothfull Sleeper, and awaking the Diligent to Fast, Watch, Pray, and Worke Out their Owne Temporall and Eternal Salvation with Feare and Trembling. London [i.e. Holland], 1622, pp. [12], 99, [1]. Signatures: A⁴ 2a² B-N⁴ O².
Here Scott again urges unity among Protestants, exemplifying the Dutch reformed church as a model. STC 22069a, with ‘wisdome’ on A3r, line 9.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott, and/or Henry Hexham], A Tongue-Combat, lately happening betweene two English Souldiers in the Tilt-boat of Gravesend, the one going to serve the King of Spaine, the other to serve the States Generall of the United Provinces. Wherein the Cause, Course, and Continuance of those Warres, is debated, and declared. London [i.e. Holland], 1623, pp. [8], 104. Signatures: A-O⁴. 
With some contemporary manuscript marginalia. Only edition, but subject to considerable confusion, there being two almost identically-titled rival publications, which STC and ESTC-on-line hardly explain, although Ewing does, very clearly. A fundamentally different text, ‘A Toung-Combat, lately happening, between two English Soldiers in the Tilt-Boat of Gravesend’ (pp. 92, printed at Mechlin, by H. Jay: STC 18327.5), is the work of the exiled Catholic martyrologist, historian, poet, and polemicist Richard Verstegen, a.k.a. Richard Rowlands, although initialed only ‘D. N.’, the terminal letters of his Dutch name. It consists of a lively debate between Red-Scarfe, an experienced and thoughtful Catholic bound for Spain, and his Protestant counterpart, Tawny-Scarfe, a warm-hearted but rather ignorant combatant headed for service in the Low Countries. Restricting their weapons to ‘tongues’, the two discuss their commitments and the conflict itself they are joining, and of course Red-Scarfe wins the day; Tawny-Scarfe is left ‘staggering’ in his loyalty to the Dutch cause, while the victor laments that two decent professional men like themselves, ‘of sence and understanding’, must take such needlessly opposite stances. Our pamphlet, in detailed reply (‘Tongue’ versus ‘Toung’ will distinguish them quickly) is either by Scott (as he implies in the general foreword to the volume), or by Henry Hexham (1585?-1650), an officer in the English Army billeted in the States who signs the three-page dedication to Sir George Holles, Sergeant-Major to General Vere, or possibly by both, in collaboration. STC and ESTC-on-line firmly choose Hexham (the work is ‘erroneously attributed to Thomas Scott’), but Ewing’s thesis treats the text, for the most part, as Scott’s, discussing the authorship problem at some length (pp. 142-43). Our ‘Tongue’ version simply adapts Verstegen’s characters and setting, keeping most of Red-Scarfe’s arguments intact, but greatly improves Tawny-Scarfe’s counter-arguments, so that (predictably) ‘this time, it is Tawny Scarf who thrashes his opponent, portraying any serving Spain as traitors to their sovereign, and convincingly argu[ing] for renewed English participation in the conflict’ (Ewing, pp. 60-61). STC 13264.8, sv. Hexham, formerly 22090, sv. Scott.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">[Thomas Scott], Symmachia: or, a True-Loves Knot. Tyed, betwixt Great Britaine and the United Provinces, by the wisedome of King James, and the States Generall; the Kings of France, Denmarke, and Sweden, the Duke of Savoy, with the States of Venice being Witnesses and Assistants. [Holland, 1624], pp. [2], 34, [2]. Signatures: π² A-D⁴ E² (π1 and E2 blank; lacking preliminary and terminal blanks).
Long near-contemporary manuscript note on the outer margin of p. 26, apparently in the same hand as the notes in (6) above, recounting ‘A trick the Hollanders put upon the English, An. 1626, about the Cape of Good Hope’, as ‘related by Sir Thomas Herbert in his Travailes’ [1634]. Only edition, continuing a plea for military union between Great Britain and the States, and dismissing the alleged Dutch acts of piracy in the East Indies – which had angered the English, witness the manuscript note – as having been perpetrated by common criminals, not truly Dutch, but ‘such as love Mammon better than Christ, and count gaine the only godliness.’ STC 22089.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Thomas Scott, The High-Waies of God and the King, wherein all men ought to walke in holinesse here, to happinesse hereafter. Delivered in two Sermons preached at Thetford in Norfolke, Anno 1620. By Thomas Scot, Bachelor in Divinity. London [i.e. Holland], 1623, pp. 88. Signatures: A-L⁴.
Oddly, the outer edges of this quarto only are tinted red, whereas all the others are plain, suggesting that this and only this one was extracted from a previously collected volume, with such coloration. This might have been an insertion in an otherwise defective original. Only edition, ‘which I preached once with approbation of the godly hearers, [and] publish now for the use of all beholders’; collating as described in ESTC. STC 22079.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Thomas Scott, The Projector. Teaching a direct, sure, and ready way to restore the decayes of the Church and State both in Honour and Revenue. Delivered in a Sermon before the Judges in Norwich, at Summer Assises there holden, Anno 1620. By Thomas Scot, Bachelor in Divinity. London [i.e. Holland], 1623, pp. [6, lacking the blank A1], 39, [1]. Signatures: A-F⁴ (A1 and F4 verso blank).
One of Scott’s three sermons preached in Norfolk, before the publication of ‘Vox Populi’ and his flight from England. STC 22081.</span></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/t3c16/alma991002415679707861" rel="ugc nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>